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OUR NAVY IN 
TIME OF WAR 

(1861-1915) 



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Hppletone' Ibome IReaMng ffioofte 

EDITED BY 
WILLIAM T. HARRIS, A.M., LL. D. 

UNITED STATES COMMISSIONER OF EDUCATION 



DIVISION III 
H ISTORY 




1. Rear admiral -special full-dress. 

2. Captain— full-dress. 

3. Lieutenant— service uniform. 

7. Private- 



4. Sailor— full-dress. 

5. Captain— marine corps, 

6. Lieutenant— in overcoat, 
-marine corps. 



APPLETONS' HOME READING BOOKS 

OUR NAVY 
IN TIME OF WAR 

(1861-1915) 

BY 

FRANKLIN MATTHEWS 




NEW YORK AND LONDON 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
1915 






Copyright, 1899, 1915, 
By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. 



r 



m\\ -4 1915 



CI.A416217 



TO 

ANDEEW E. WATROUS, 

PATRIOT, STUDENT, AND TRUE JOURNALIST, 

WHO IN THE NEWSPAPER RELATION 

OF SUPERIOR TO SUBORDINATE FIRST STIMULATED 

THE WRITERS SPECIAL INTEREST IN NAVAL AFFAIRS, 

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED 

BY ONE WHO PLACES HIGH AMONG THE RULES OF CONDUCT 

THE DUTY NOT TO FORGET THOSE THIN(JS 

WHICH SHOULD BE REMEMBERED. 



mTRODUCTIOIsr TO THE HOME READING 
BOOK SERIES BY THE EDITOR. 



The new education takes two important , direc- 
tions— one of these is toward original observation, 
requiring the pupil to test and verify what is taught 
him at school by his own experiments. The infor- 
mation that he learns from books or hears from his 
teacher's lips must be assimilated by incorporating it 
with his own experience. 

The other direction pointed out by the new edu- 
cation is systematic home reading. It forms a part of 
school extension of all kinds. The so-called " Univer- 
sity Extension " that originated at Cambridge and Ox- 
ford has as its chief feature the aid of home reading by 
lectures and round-table discussions, led or conducted 
by experts who also lay out the course of reading. 
The Chautauquan movement in this country prescribes 
a series of excellent books and furnishes for a goodly 
number of its readers annual courses of lectures. The 
teachers' reading circles that exist in many States pre- 
scribe the books to be read, and publish some analysis, 
commentary, or catechism to aid the members. 

Home reading, it seems, furnishes the essential 
basis of this great movement to extend education 



vu 



viii OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

beyond tlie school and to make seK-culture a habit 
of life. 

Looking more carefully at the difference between 
the two directions of the new education we can see 
what each accomplishes. There is first an effort to 
train the original powers of the individual and make 
him self -active, quick at observation, and free in his 
thinking. Next, the new education endeavors, by the 
reading of books and the study of the wisdom of the 
race, to make the child or youth a participator in the 
results of experience of all mankind. 

These two movements may be made antagonistic 
by poor teaching. The book knowledge, containing as 
it does the precious lesson of human experience, may 
be so taught as to bring with it only dead rules of 
conduct, only dead scraps of information, and no 
stimulant to original thinking. Its contents may be 
memorized without being understood. On the other 
hand, the self -activity of the child may be stimulated 
at the expense of his social well-being — his originality 
may be cultivated at the expense of his rationality. 
If he is taught persistently to have his own way, to 
trust only his own senses, to cling to his own opinions 
heedless of the experience of his fellows, he is pre- 
paring for an unsuccessful, misanthropic career, and 
is likely enough to end his life in a madhouse. 

It is admitted that a too exclusive study of the 
knowledge found in books, the knowledge which is 
aggregated from the experience and thought of other 
people, may result in loading the mind of the pupil 
with material which he can not use to advantage. 



EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION. [^ 

Some minds are so full of luml^er that there is no 
space left to set np a workshop. The necessity of 
uniting both of these directions of intellectual activity 
in the schools is therefore obvious, but we must not, 
in this place, fall into the error of supposing that it is 
the oral instruction in school and the personal influ- 
ence of the teacher alone that excites the pupil to ac- 
tivity. Book instruction is not always dry and theo- 
retical. The very persons who declaim against the 
book, and praise in such strong terms the self -activity 
of the pupil and original research, are mostly persons 
who have received their practical impulse from read- 
ing the writings of educational reformers. Yery few 
persons have received an impulse from personal con- 
tact with inspiring teachers compared with the num- 
ber that have been aroused by reading such books as 
Herbert Spencer's Treatise on Education, Rousseau's 
Emile, Pestalozzi's Leonard and Gertrude, Francis 
W. Parker's Talks about Teaching, G. Stanley 
Hall's Pedagogical Seminary. Think in this connec- 
tion, too, of the impulse to observation in natural sci- 
ence produced by such books as those of Hugh Miller, 
Faraday, Tyndall, Huxley, Agassiz, and Darwin. 

The new scientific book is different from the old. 
The old style book of science gave dead results where 
the new one gives not only the results, but a minute 
account of the method employed in reaching those re- 
sults. An insight into the method employed in dis- 
covery trains the reader into a naturalist, an historian, 
a sociologist. The books of the writers above named 
have done more to stimulate original research on the 



X OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

part of their readers than all other influences com- 
bined. 

It is therefore much more a matter of importance 
to get the right kind of book than to get a living 
teacher. The book which teaches results, and at the 
same time gives in an intelligible manner the steps of 
discovery and the methods employed, is a book 
which will stimulate the student to repeat the ex- 
periments described and get beyond them into fields 
of original research himself. Every one remem- 
bers the published lectures of Faraday on chemistry, 
which exercised a wide influence in changing the 
style of books on natural science, causing them to 
deal with method more than results, and thus train 
the reader's power of conducting original research. 
Robinson Crusoe for nearly two hundred years has 
aroused the spirit of adventure and prompted young 
men to resort to the border lands of civilization. A 
library of home reading should contain books that in- 
cite to self-activity and arouse the spirit of inquiry. 
The books should treat of methods of discovery and 
evolution. All nature is unified by the discovery of 
the law of evolution. Each and every being in the 
world is now explained by the process of development 
to which it belongs. Every fact now throws light on 
all the others by illustrating the process of growth in 
which each has its end and aim. 

The Home Readino^ Books are to be classed as 
follows : 

First Division. Natural history, including popular 
scientific treatises on plants and animals, and also de- 



EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION. xi 

scriptions of geographical localities. The branch of 
study in the district school course which corresponds 
to this is geography. Travels and sojourns in distant 
lands; special writings which treat of this or that 
animal or plant, or family of animals or plants ; any- 
thing that relates to organic nature or to meteorol- 
ogy, or descriptive astronomy may be placed in this 
class. 

Second Division. Whatever relates to physics or 
natural philosophy, to the statics or dynamics of air or 
water or light or electricity, or to tlie properties of 
matter ; whatever relates to chemistry, either organic 
or inorganic — books on these subjects belong to the 
class that relates to what is inorganic. Even the so- 
called organic chemistry relates to the analysis of 
organic bodies into their inorganic compounds. 

Third Division. History, biography, and ethnol- 
ogy. Books relating to the lives of individuals; to 
the social life of the nation ; to the colhsions of na- 
tions in war, as well as to the aid that one nation 
gives to another through commerce in times of peace ; 
books on ethnology relating to the modes of life of 
savage or civilized peoples; on primitive manners 
and customs— books on these subjects belong to the 
third class, relating particularly to the human will, 
not merely the individual will but the social will, 
the will of the tribe or nation; and to this third 
class belong also books on ethics and morals, and 
on forms of government and laws, and what is in- 
cluded under the term civics, or the duties of citi- 
zenship. 



xii OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

Fourth Division. The fourth class of books in- 
dudes more especially literature and works that make 
known the beautiful in such departments as sculpture, 
painting, architecture and music. Literature and art 
show human nature in the form of feelings, emotions, 
and aspirations, and they show how these feelings 
lead over to deeds and to clear thoughts. This de- 
partment of books is perhaps more important than 
any other in our home reading, inasmuch as it teaches 
a knowledge of human nature and enables us to un- 
derstand the motives that lead our fellow-men to 
action. 

Plan for Use as Supplementary Reading. 

The first work of the child in the school is to 
learn to recognize in a printed form the words that 
are famiHar to him by ear. These words constitute 
what is called the colloquial vocabulary. They are 
words that he has come to know from having heard 
them used by the members of his family and by his 
playmates. He uses these words himself with con- 
siderable skill, but what he knows by ear he does not 
yet know by sight. It will require many weeks, 
many months even, of constant effort at reading the 
printed page to bring him to the point where the 
sight of the written word brings up as much to his 
mind as the sound of the spoken word. But patience 
and practice will by and by make the printed word 
far more suggestive than the spoken word, as every 
scholar may testify. 

In order to bring about this familiarity with the 



EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION. xiii 

printed word it has been found necessary to re-en- 
force the reading in the school by supplementary 
reading at home. Books of the same grade of diffi- 
culty with the reader used in school are to be pro- 
vided for the pupil. They must be so interesting 
to him that he will read them at home, using his time 
before and after school, and even his holidays, for 
this purpose. 

But this matter of familiarizing the child with the 
printed word is only one half of the object aimed at 
by the supplementary home reading. He should 
read that which interests him. He should read that 
which will increase his power in making deeper 
studies, and what he reads should tend to correct his 
habits of observation. Step by step he should be 
initiated into the scientific method. Too many ele- 
mentary books fail to teach the scientific method be- 
cause they point out in an unsystematic way only 
those features of the object which the untutored 
senses of the pupil would discover at first glance. It 
is not useful to tell the child to observe a piece of 
chalk and see that it is white, more or less friable, 
and that it makes a mark on a fence or a wall. Sci- 
entific observation goes immediately behind the facts 
which lie obvious to a superficial investigation. 
Above all, it directs attention to such features of the 
object as relate it to its environment. It directs at- 
tention to the features that have a causal influence in 
making the object what it is and in extending its 
effects to other objects. Science discovers the recip- 
rocal action of objects one upon another. 



xlv OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

After the child has learned how to observe what 
is essentia] in one class of objects he is in a measure 
fitted to observe for himself all objects that resemble 
this class. After he has learned how to observe the 
seeds of the milkweed, he is partially prepared to 
observe the seeds of the dandelion, the burdock, and 
the thistle. After he has learned how to study the 
history of his native country, he has acquired some 
ability to study the history of England and Scotland 
or France or Germany. In the same way the daily 
preparation of his reading lesson at school aids him 
to read a story of Dickens or Walter Scott. 

The teacher of a school will know how to obtain 
a small sum to invest in supplementary reading. In 
a graded school of four hundred pupils ten books of 
each number are sufficient, one set of ten books to be 
loaned the first week to the best pupils in one of the 
rooms, the next week to the ten pupils next in ability. 
On Monday afternoon a discussion should be held 
over the topics of interest to the pupils who have 
read the book. The pupils who have not yet read 
the book will become interested, and await anxiously 
their turn for the loan of the desired volume. Another 
set of ten books of a higher grade may be used in the 
same way in a room containing more advanced pupils. 
The older pupils who have left school, and also the 
parents, should avail themselves of the opportunity to 
read the books brought home from school. Thus is 
begun that continuous education by means of the pub- 
lic library which is not limited to the school period, 
but lasts through life. W. T. Harris. 



PREFACE. 



The deeds of the navy of the United States have 
been ever glorious. That part of them related in these 
pages, covering the period from 1861 to 1915, has 
been selected not because there was greater glory in 
the deeds of the American navy in the civil war and 
in the war with Spain than in the earlier days of the 
service, but chiefly because the types of vessels and 
of guns now in general use throughout the world 
were begun and developed in part in the American 
civil war. The armor, the turreted battle ship, the 
swift cruiser, the rifled guns of to-day were the direct 
outgrowth of the civil war. Tlie wooden war ship and 
the smooth-bore guns were doomed as the result of 
that conflict. The battle ship of 1915 is simply the 
turreted monitor and the armored battle ship of 1863 
combined and improved. The men of to-day, though 
just as brave, are no whit braver than the men of the 
Revolutionary war or the War of 1812. 

Not all the details of the work of the navy in the 
years covered by this book are given here. An at- 



xvi OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

tempt has been made to tell the story of the chief 
events, and to bring out their significance, especially 
for young readers. The book is intended also to in- 
terest those who never grow old or feeble in patriotism, 
and who are proud of American prowess on the seas, 
whether they be sixteen or three-score and ten, or 
even older. 

The terms North and South are used instead of 
Federal and Confederate because they are simpler, 
and because they are in common use in speech regard- 
ing the civil war. 

The South had almost no navy in that war. So 
far as it did have one, it was creditable to the zeal 
and courage of those who fought in its war ships. 
What greater compliment can be paid to the South 
than to say that the men in its ships fought with true 
American bravery to the last? 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I. — The famous Monitor 1 

II. — First fight between ironclads .... 19 

III. — Fighting along the Atlantic coast ... 33 

IV. — Up the Mississippi — Farragut appears . . 49 

V. — Down the Mississippi — helping the army . . 72 

VI. — The great fight at Mobile ..... 96 

VII. — Failures off Charleston 119 

VIII. — Capture op Fort Fisher 138 

IX. — Bravery in the navy in the civil war — Cush- 

ing's deeds 151 

X. — Queer boats used in the civil war . . . 173 

XI. — Vessels destroyed by torpedoes .... 193 

XII. — THE great blockade — ALABAMA AND KeARSARGB 

fight 209 

XIII. — Dewey's victory at Manila 231 

XIV. — The naval battle of July 3, near Santiago . . 249 

XV.— Vera Cruz, 1914 , 276 

xvii 



LIST OF ILLUSTEATIONS. 



PAOB 

Uniforms of men and officers of the U. S. Navy Frontispiece 

Fight between the Monitor and the Merrimac . facing 1 

Diagram of the battle of Hampton Roads .... 13 

Map of Charleston Harbor and vicinity 20 

In the Monitor's turret 22 

The Chesapeake and tributaries 29 

Destruction of the United States man-of-war Cumberland by 

the Confederate ram Merrimac 32 

The North Carolina Sounds 35 

Diagram of the battle of Port Royal . . . . .39 

Dupont's circle of fire 41 

Scene of the battle of Roanoke Island . .... 43 
The Union navy flotilla co-operating with the land force in 

the attack on Fort Macon 48 

Scene of the naval operations in the Western rivers . .51 

Farragut's fleet going into action 57 

Farragut's fleet passing the forts 60 

Kennon fires through his own bow 63 

Attack on Grand Gulf . . 71 

Scene of the naval operations on the upper Mississippi . . 74 

Bombardment of Fort Henry 76 

Ironclads attack Fort Donelson , , . . . .79 

xix 



XX 



OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 



PAOE 

Island No. 10 and batteries 81 

Commander Walke runs the batteries at Island No. 10 . .83 

Turning operation, Vicksburg campaign, 1863 ... 89 

Map of Mobile Bay 97 

Deck plan of the Tennessee and her appearance after the 

battle 99 

Diagram of the battle of Mobile Bay 104 

Battle of Mobile Bay 107 

At close quarters in Mobile Bay 113 

Diagram showing the different points at which the Tennessee 

was rammed by Farragut's vessels 115 

Sinking of the stone fleet in the port of Charleston, S. C. . 118 

Landing troops from transports 121 

Ironclads attacking Fort Sumter 138 

The Southern ram Atlanta 131 

United States monitor towing a disabled gunboat in a storm 

off Cumming's Point battery 133 

Interior of Fort Fisher 141 

Military insignia of the United States navy .... 160 
Wreck of the Cristobal Colon on the beach at Rio Tarquino, 

fifty miles west of Santiago de Cuba .... 164 
The David, submarine boat used by the South . . .174 

Types of United States vessels used during the civil war . 182 

Battle ship Oregon 187 

Torpedoes used by the South ....... 196 

United States cruiser Raleigh, which took part in the naval 

battle at Manila Bay 203 

United States cruiser Baltimore 206 

Chasing a blockade runner 210 

Typical blockade runner 212 

Heroes of the War of the Rebellion 214 

The city of Richmond in flames, seen from the James River 217 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. xxi 

PAGE 

Southern steamer Florida, sunk at Hampton Roads . . 222 
Northern merchantman held up by the Southern commerce 

destroyer Alabama 224 

The last of the Alabama .226 

The old and the new 232 

The wreck of the Maine 235 

Admiral Dewey's flagship Olympia 237 

The cruiser Boston 239 

Scene on board the wreck of the Reina Cristina . . . 242 

Shoulder straps of the United States navy .... 244 

Naval heroes of the war with Spain 247 

The Cuban navy — the only vessel owned by the Cubans . 250 
Second-class battle ship Texas, which took part in the fight 

with Admiral Cervera's fleet 254 

Admiral Sampson's flagship New York 260 

Battle ship Massachusetts 262 

Admiral Schley's flagship Brooklyn 264 

Spanish cruiser Maria Teresa after the battle off Santiago . 267 

Battle ship Iowa 270 

Vizcaya at the moment of the explosion of her magazines . 273 



OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR, 
(1861-1915.) 



CHAPTEE I. 

THE FAMOUS MONITOR. 

On the night of Friday, March 7, 1862, there was 
steaming south, along the Atlantic coast, between the 
capes of the Delaware and the capes of the Chesa- 
peake, a vessel such as had never been seen on the 
seas before. That vessel was a war ship — the famous 
Monitor. There was a violent storm during the night, 
and that the boat did not sink was a great wonder. 
She was a curious vessel. She was simply a floating 
steam raft, with a round iron box upon it in the cen- 
ter and a square little hut, built something like a 
log house, in front of the box. The smokestack 
stuck up back of the round box, and near that was an- 
other pipe that looked something like a smokestack; 
it was used to supply fresh air to the crew down in 
the raft. The vessel had been built in less than four 
months. Long before she started from New York 
harbor, where she was built, many persons declared 
that she would sink as soon as she got into rough w^ater. 



2 OUR NAVY IN TIME OP WAR. 

The E'ortli and the South had been at war for 
nearly a year, and it was known that the South was 
preparing an ironclad vessel at Norfolk which was 
expected to destroy the war ships of the Korth that 
had been stationed at Fort Monroe, just inside Chesa- 
peake Bay, and only a few miles from Norfolk. The 
use of ironclads in war at that time was new. Eu- 
ropean nations were just beginning to build them, but 
they were of old-fashioned models. When it became 
known that the South was to have an ironclad, the 
North decided that it also must have one to save its 
ships from destruction, and to protect its large cities, 
such as New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and its 
many seaport towns, from being placed at the mercy 
of a vessel which could not be sunk by any cannon 
balls of those days. Therefore the Monitor was built. 

It was feared that the South would send some 
ships up the Potomac to try to capture Washington, 
and the Monitor, before she was really finished or 
tried thoroughly, was sent south to go up the Chesa- 
peake and the Potomac, to protect the national capital. 
She started out from Sandy Hook, in New York har- 
bor, at eleven o'clock of the morning of Thursday, 
March 6, 1862. The weather was pleasant, the sea 
smooth, and to the surprise of nearly all on board, 
the new war ship got along very well. She was towed 
by a tugboat called the Seth Low, and was escorted 
by two small steamers. Thursday night all went well, 



THE FAMOUS MONITOR. 3 

but on Friday morning the wind became stronger and 
drove the waves over the flat decks of the Monitor in 
such quantities as to alarm those inside the boat. 
The hatches over the openings in the decks leaked, 
and the water poured down into the vessel in great 
quantities. The waves broke against the little square 
house on the deck which was used as a pilot house, 
and the water ran in through the peep holes and sev- 
eral times drove the men at the wheel away from their 
work of steering. The water also washed against the 
round box on top of the raft, in which were two guns 
on which the fate of the nation seemed to depend. 
The round box turned on a pivot, and was supposed 
to fit tightly to the deck. Where the deck and the 
box joined there had been packed a lot of oakum to 
keep the water from leaking through. This oakum 
was soon washed away, and the sea poured through 
the opening and down into the ship. 

The vessel pitched and rolled, and when night 
came it seemed as if she would go down. The waves 
grew higher and higher, and now and then, when 
they broke on her decks, some of the water dashed 
down the smokestack, and soon the boiler fires were 
in danger of being put out. That meant, of course, 
that the ship would be unable to remain afloat, be- 
cause she could not be steered and the water could 
engulf her easily. 

But there was more trouble and danger in store 



4 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

for the brave men who had volunteered to take the 
Monitor to sea. The water broke over the pipe 
through which fresh air was drawn down into the 
ship, and this disabled the machinery that was used to 
control the air supply. The water was rising rapidly 
in the fire room, and there was no fresh air to make 
the fires burn brightly. Gas from the engines and 
furnaces was filling up the place so that it was danger- 
ous to stay there. Two engineers rushed in to try to 
stop the leaks and they were overcome by gas, and 
had to be dragged out to save their lives. The steam 
pumps were started, but the fires were so slow that 
steam could not be had to use for pumping. Hand 
pumps were then tried, but the water came in faster 
than the men could get it out. Then the men tried to 
bail out the boat, but this was also a failure, because 
the ship rolled and tossed, and the water from the 
buckets was spilled out before it could be passed up 
the ladders and emptied outside. 

From the forward part of the ship there came 
dreadful noises throughout this long night. The deck 
of the Monitor stuck out a long distance from the hull 
in front and back, and under the extended front there 
was a hole made Avhich was called the anchor well. 
The anchor was not carried in plain sight, as in these 
days, but was underneath the deck, and Avhen not in 
use it was pulled up and fastened in this hole or well. 
As the Monitor fell with the waves, a large quantity 



THE FAMOUS MONITOR. 5 

of air was eaiiglit in this well iinderiieatli tlie deck, 
and when it was compressed by the water as the 
Monitor plunged underneath, it made a mournful 
noise. Some of the crew said that it sounded like aw- 
ful screams, and one of them said the noises were like 
" death groans of twenty men." 

The men on the tugboat Seth Low could be of 
no help to those on the Monitor. As the noises con- 
tinued through the night, and the ship plunged and 
rolled dreadfully, and as the water dashed about in- 
side the hold, almost putting out the fires and making 
the place dangerous for the crew, it seemed as if those 
who declared that the strange craft would never stand 
a rough sea were right, and that the men who were 
willing to risk their lives in this vessel must surely 
be drowned. The wind was what is called " off shore," 
and it was thought that if the tugboat could take the 
Monitor in toward the coast the water would be 
smoother and the vessel might live. This was done, 
and as the tugboat and the Monitor approached the 
shore it was found that the water was smoother. The 
wind then began to go down, but toward the morn- 
ing it became stronger, and once more it seemed as 
if the ship must be lost. This time the steering gear 
got out of order. All hands were summoned to fix 
it, and after working from two to three hours it was 
repaired, so that once more the ship could be steered 
properly. 



6 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

AVlien daylight caine on Saturday, Marcli 8, 1862, 
the sea had gone down, and the Monitor was well 
along in her journey toward the Chesapeake. That 
was one of the most fortunate things for the United 
States that ever happened in its history, for although 
one can not tell what would have been the result had 
the Monitor been lost, it is known that she really 
saved the navy from destruction. About four o'clock 
in the afternoon, as the tugboat and the Monitor were 
going south, sounds of heavy cannonading were heard 
across the waters from the neighborhood of the capes 
of Chesapeake Bay. Soon a pilot came aboard and 
said that the South's great ironclad, the Merrimac, 
had come out that day and had gone up to the neigh- 
borhood of Fort Monroe, on the stretch of waters 
where the James River meets the Chesapeake, and 
which is called Hampton Roads. He said the Merri- 
mac had destroyed two of the finest ships in the United 
States navy, had killed many men, and the next day, 
Sunday, Marcli 9th, she would probably finish up the 
four other ships of the ^orth lying there. 

It was not until nine o'clock on Saturday night 
that the Monitor reached the United States vessels in 
Hampton Roads, and learned the result of that dread- 
ful day's work. The men on board the Monitor 
began to prepare at once for battle the next day. 
They had had no sleep since they had left !N"ew York, 
and very little food, and it was not known whether 



THE FAMOUS MONITOR. 7 

their ship couki do real fighting. The news of the 
loss of the Northern ships had spread all over the 
country. President Lincoln and his cabinet members 
were very much cast down when they met the next 
morning. So serious was the situation that Mr. 
Stanton, the Secretary of War, said: 

" The Merrimac will change the whole course of 
tlie war; she will destroy every naval vessel; she will 
lay all the cities on the seaboard under contribution. 
I have no doubt that the enemy is this minute on her 
way to Washington, and it is not unlikely that we 
shall have a shell or a cannon ball from one of her 
guns in the White House before we leave the room." 

But this was not to be. The Monitor was fight- 
ing, probably at that very minute on that Sunday 
morning, and the South's great ironclad, the Mer- 
rimac, had met her match. 

To understand the nature of the battle and what 
it meant, one should go back fully a year. One of 
the greatest navy yards in the United States was that 
at Norfolk. Before the war started there were at this 
yard more than two thousand cannon, of which three 
hundred were splendid big guns, called Dahlgren 
guns. There were there more than one hundred and 
fifty tons of powder and a great lot of supplies for 
ships. The South wanted all these supplies. The 
State of Virginia had not yet left the Union, al- 
though other States had. The commandant of the 



8 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

Norfolk Navy Yard was Commodore McCauley. He 
was old and under the influence of Southern officers, 
who wanted to get control of the cannon and other 
articles to be used in war. Several United States 
war ships were there, including the steam frigate 
Merrimac, the sailing sloops of war Cumberland, 
Germantown, and Plymouth, the brig Dolphin, and 
six other sailing ships, including the famous United 
States, all of which were not of much use. Never- 
theless, the value of the ships and stores was estimated 
at fully five million dollars. 

The Navy Department became very anxious over 
the property there, and it was decided to try to get the 
frigate Merrimac away from the yard. The machin- 
ery of the vessel was put in order, steam was raised, 
and the ship was ready finally to sail away, but Com- 
modore McCauley decided to hold the vessel until the 
next morning. This was in the latter part of April, 
1861. The next morning he decided to hold the ves- 
sel a little longer, because he did not want to offend 
the people of Virginia by sending the ship away. 
Then there arrived from Washington the steamer 
Pawnee, under Captain Paulding, with a regiment of 
Massachusetts soldiers on board. Paulding had orders 
to take the Merrimac and other ships away from the 
yard if he could, and if he could not, to destroy the 
ships and as much of the property as he could. South- 
ern troops had been forming about Norfolk as if about 



THE FAMOUS MONITOR. 9 

to attack, and there was nothing to be done except to 
destroy the ships and property. The Pawnee did man- 
age to tow the Cumberland away from the yard. One 
evening was spent in preparations to destroy the ships 
and buildings. Commodore McCauley went to bed 
ignorant of the attempt that was to be made. He 
thought the Pawnee had come there to protect the 
place. A little after four o'clock in the morning the 
signal was fired, and in a few minutes the ships and 
other property were in flames. The dry dock was 
not destroyed, because the fuse did not light the pow- 
der that had been placed in it. The magazine with 
its shells and powder had already been seized by the 
Southern men, and in the hurry of setting fire to the 
yard and of getting away there was little burned be- 
yond the ships and several buildings. 

The vast stores passed into the hands of the South. 
The Merrimac and other vessels burned to the water's 
edge and sunk. It was found afterward that the en- 
gines of the Merrimac were not damaged seriously, 
and it was because of that fact that the South and 
^N'orth met in the first battle between ironclads with 
the Monitor on one side and the Merrimac on the 
other, on March 9, 1862, nearly a year later. The 
South had a very able naval officer, named John M. 
Brooke, who was formerly a lieutenant in the United 
States navy. He was ordered to prepare plans for an 
ironclad. The South had very little iron and few 



10 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

factories, and it was a hard task to build such a vessel. 
The wreck of the Merrimac was raised, and it was 
found that the engines were uninjured. That was a 
piece of good fortune for the South. Its men built on 
the hull of the ship a sort of house, with sloping sides 
of pine and oak, two feet thick. Iron plating, four 
inches thick, covered the outside. There was a plat- 
ing of iron one inch thick along the hull, on which 
this deck house rested. This iron plating extended 
two feet below the surface of the water. There were 
windows in the deck house through which the vessel's 
ten guns could fire. Six of these guns were nine- 
inch Dahlgrens, and four were rifles designed by 
Lieutenant Brooke, which were said to be the best 
guns known at that time. 

The Merrimac drew twenty-two feet of water, had 
a crew of three hundred and twenty men, and was 
very hard to steer. The Southerners called her the 
Virginia, but the name Merrimac always clung to 
her. The w^ork of making her into an ironclad be- 
gan in June, 1861. At this time the North had done 
nothing about building an iron war ship. In August 
Congress set aside fifteen hundred thousand dollars 
for this work. It was not until September 8th that a 
decision was made as to what to do with this money. 
A board of naval officers decided that three ships 
should be built, and one of them should be an iron- 
clad with a revolving turret, according to a design 



THE FAMOUS MONITOR. H 

suggested by John Ericsson, a noted Swedish inven- 
tor, who had come to this country to live. It was not 
until October 4, 1861, that the contract for the Moni- 
tor was made. She was to be called the Monitor to 
warn the South that she was to be dreaded, and also 
to give notice to England that her navy was really out 
of date, and that a great change was about to take 
place in w^ar ships. 

Three gangs of men worked eight hours a day 
each on the ship, and she was launched on January 
30, 1862. The hull was one hundred and twenty-four 
feet long, thirty-six feet wide, and twelve feet deep, 
and over the hull was laid a superstructure which ex- 
tended beyond and made a vessel one hundred and 
seventy-two feet long and forty-one and a half feet 
wide. The deck stuck out over the hull as the deck 
of a ferryboat does in these days. The deck was to be 
only one foot above the water line. In the center of 
the ship rose the turret. It was nine feet high, twen- 
ty feet in diameter, and eight inches thick. The 
thickness was made up of eight one-inch iron plates. 
Inside were two eleven-inch smooth-bore guns. There 
were iron shutters for the portholes to keep out shot 
while the guns were being loaded. There was a thick- 
ness of five inches of iron along the sides of the low 
deck. The smokestack was arranged to be taken 
down while the vessel was in action. In the front 
of the ship was the square pilot house, with scarcely 



12 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

room enough for three men to stand in it. The guns 
could not be shot in the direction of the pilot house, 
because the shells would kill those inside and sweep 
it away. There was only a speak ing-tul)e connection 
between the pilot house and the turret. 

Word reached the Xorth that the Merrimac was 
nearly done, and on February 19th the Monitor was 
sent hurriedly from the place in Greenpoint where 
she was built to the Brooklyn N^avy Yard; a week 
later she was put into commission and tried in the 
East River. Her steering gear was out of order, how- 
ever, and it was not known whether she would be a 
success. After another w^eek the vessel went as far 
as Sandy Hook under her own steam. Then came 
orders to hurry her South, and on Thursday, March 
6th, as has been told, she started on her perilous jour- 
ney. The Monitor was under command of Lieuten- 
ant John Worden, who had done some notable work 
at Pensacola earlier in the war, and had been im- 
prisoned ^at Montgomery, Ala., because of it. He 
was really sick when he volunteered and was selected 
to command the Monitor. Lieutenant S. Dana 
Greene volunteered to go with him as executive 
officer. Assistant-Engineer Isaac Newton was at the 
head of the four engineers, and Chief-Engineer A. C. 
Stimers was sent along to watch the machinery and to 
make a report about it. The crew consisted of fifty- 
eight men. 



THE FAMOUS MONITOR. 



13 



Meanwhile the Southern men at Xorfolk were hur- 
rying up the Merrimac. When she started out from 
Norfolk on the morning of March 8, 1862, the work- 
men were still busy on her, and some of them were 




put ashore after the vessel had got in motion. She was 
under the command of Captain Franklin Buchanan, 
formerly of the United States navy, and a very brave 
man. She had a green crew on her, and had never 



14 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

steamed a mile after being fixed over, and few of 
the officers had ever met one another. She could go 
only about four knots an hour, and when she started 
down the river from ^N^orfolk to Hampton Koads on 
that Saturday morning to destroy the Northern fleet, 
there was very little fear on those ships that anytbing 
serious would happen. At anchor in Hampton Roads 
near each other and off Newport News were the frig- 
ate Congress, which carried fifty guns, and the sloop 
of war Cuniherland, carrying twenty-four guns, 
which the Pawnee had saved from tlie Norfolk Navy 
Yard nearly a year before. Farther down Hampton 
Roads, toward Fort Monroe on the Chesapeake Bay, 
were the old frigate St. Lawrence and the two mod- 
ern steam frigates, Roanoke and Minnesota, former 
sister ships to the Merrimac. The Northern officers 
had begun to think the Merrimac was a failure, and 
when some one saw the smoke coming down the 
river, he cried out: 

" Here comes that thing! " 

It was a beautiful morning, and as the Merrimac, 
escorted by several small gunboats, came out in 
Hampton Roads, all the Northern ships cleared for 
action and made preparations for a fight. The Con- 
gress and Cumberland Avere sailing ships and re- 
mained anchored. Tlie [Merrimac came on slowly and 
steadily, and about one o'clock in the afternoon the 
Congress and the Cumberland began to shoot at her 



THE FAMOUS MONITOR. 15 

at long range. The Northern batteries on shore also 
took part, but it was seen that the shells did no dam- 
age whatever, and simply glanced off the sides of this 
new monster of war. When the Merrimac was very 
close to the two ships, the bow port of the Merrimac 
was opened and she fired at the Cumberland. The 
shot killed or wounded most of the crew at one of 
the Cumberland's guns near the stern. Then the 
Merrimac started for the Congress. Captain Buch- 
anan, of the Merrimac, had a brother who was pay- 
master on the Congress, but that made no difference in 
the captain's desire to sink the Congress. He fired 
a broadside into her which did great damage, killing 
a large number of men. Then the Merrimac made for 
the Cumberland, so as to sink her by ramming. The 
men on the Congress, thinking that the Merrimac had 
been afraid to attack them further, sprang into the 
rigging and cheered as the ironclad seemed to run 
away ; but it was the wrong time to cheer. The Cum- 
berland shot at the Merrimac in vain. The Merrimac 
struck the Cumberland a terrific blow in the forward 
part of the ship, after which the Merrimac backed off, 
leaving part of her prow sticking in the Cumberland. 
The Cumberland tipped far over and then righted 
herself, but the blow was mortal. Water rushed in 
the open sides of the ship and she was doomed. The 
brave crew kept fighting desperately. Every time the 
Merrimac fired into her a dozen or more of the men 



10 



OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 



nt the i;uiis wuuld hv killed. The Merrimac steamed 
up close beside her again, and her officers called upon 
Lieutenant (}(M)ro'e AV. .Morris, who was in command 
(.f tlie (^nid)erhind on that day, in the absence of 
Cnptain lladford, to surrender and save a great loss 
of life. Morris replied: 

"Xever! I'll sink alongside.'' 

Ammunition was brought up to the dry places 
on deck, the wounded were brought up also, and as 
the ship sank slowly the men kicked off their shoes, 
threw away their extra clothing, and fired the cannon 
until the water fairly engulfed them all. Not until it 
was seen that the ship would go down within five min- 
utes did some of those who had survived in the fight 
take to the boats, dragging the wounded with them. 

There were three hundred and seventy-six men 
on board of the Cumberland when that fight began, 
and of those one hundred and seventeen were lost and 
twenty-three were missing. After the vessel went 
down her masts stuck above the water, and the old 
fiag floated in plain sight. 

J^uehanan then turned again toward the Congress. 
Lieutenant Joseph B. Smith was in command of that 
vessel. He saw the fate of the Cumberland, and he 
ran his lK»at aground so that the Merrimac could not 
ram her. The Merrimac came within two hundred 
yards of the stern of the Congress, where broadside 
after broadside was poured into her, to which the 



THE FAMOUS MONITOR. 17 

stranded ship could reply witli only two small guns. 
Soon Lieutenant Smith was killed. Every time a 
shot from the Merrimac struck the vessel there was 
awful slaughter. After keeping up the fight for more 
than an hour, Lieutenant Pendergrast, who was then 
in command, hoisted a white flag and surrendered. 
Some of the batteries on the shore fired on the South- 
ern men who were taking charge of the vessel after the 
surrender. It was a violation of the rules of war, but 
it was done through a mistake. The Merrimac replied 
by recalling her men and by firing hot shot into the 
Congress, setting her on fire. Captain Buchanan, of 
the Merrimac, was wounded by a rifle ball from shore 
just before this occurred. 

While the fights between the Merrimac and the 
Cumberland and the Congress were going on, the 
other Northern vessels, the Minnesota, Koanoke, and 
St. Lawrence, had tried to go to the aid of the two 
Northern ships, but they all ran aground. It was five 
o'clock in the afternoon when the Congress was set 
afire, the tide was running low, and it was seen that it 
would be impossible for the Merrimac to do much 
more work that day. She turned away and went to the 
mouth of the river leading to Norfolk, satisfied with 
the day's work, and willing to leave the task of finish- 
ing up the other vessels at her leisure the next day. 
Two of her men had been killed by a shot that had en- 
tered a porthole, and eight had been wounded. The 



18 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

Congress had had one hundred and thirty killed out of 
her crew of four hundred and thirty-four men. Alto- 
gether the loss of the Xorth was two hundred and fifty 
men killed and drowned, in addition to the two ships, 
Cumberland and Congress. 

The Congress burned far into the night, and the 
flames lit up the harbor as the little Monitor, which 
was called " a cheese box on a raft," steamed in. 
Worden, the commander of the Monitor, went to the 
Roanoke to ask what he should do the next day — 
whether to go to Washington, according to orders, or 
to stay and fight the Merrimac. Flag-Officer Mar- 
ston told him to stay and fight, and disobey his orders. 
It was most fortunate that he did stay. That night 
was probably the darkest night for the Xorth of the 
entire civil war. • The next day, when the Secretary of 
the Xavy, Mr. Gideon Welles, w^nt to church, he met 
Captain eToseph Smith, the father of Lieutenant 
Smith, who had been killed on the Congress. Mr. 
Welles told Captain Smith that the Congress had been 
lost. Captain Smith replied: 

" Then Joe is dead." 

The Secretary of the Xavy said that no list of the 
killed and wounded had arrived, and he hoped that 
Lieutenant Smith was safe. 

Captain Smith replied: 

" Oh no, you don't know Joe as I know him; he 
never would surrender his ship." 



CHAPTER II. 

FIRST FIGHT BETWEEN IRONCLADS. 

Bright and early on Sunday morning, March 9, 
1862, the Merrimac was ready to finish up the work 
of destroying the I^orthern fleet. Lieutenant Catesby 
Jones was now in command of the vesseL The night 
before he and his men had seen the Monitor steam up 
beside the Minnesota and anchor. They were not 
alarmed at the appearance of the North's ironclad, 
for such they knew it to be. At half past seven 
o'clock in the morning the Merrimac started out on 
her day's work. Her commander intended to ignore 
the Monitor, and he fired his first shot at the Minne- 
sota, doing some damage to her. The Monitor began 
to move as soon as the Merrimac was seen coming out 
to renew the fight. Lieutenant Worden was in the 
pilot house, and Greene and Stimers with sixteen men 
were in the turret. The Monitor ran straight in front 
of the Merrimac, and the Merrimac fired one of her 
seven-inch guns, but the Monitor was so low in the 
water and the turret and pilot house were so small that 

the Monitor was not hit. The Monitor kept going 

19 




Map of Charleston harbor and vicinity. 



FIRST FIGHT BETWEEN IRONCLADS. 21 

closer, and wlieii very near the Merrimac fired her two 
eleven-inch guns. The cannon balls struck the Merri- 
mac on the sloping deck house and glanced off, doing 
no harm. Then the Merrimac turned her side to the 
Monitor and fired a broadside against her. This time 
some of the cannon balls struck the turret. 

Right there occurred the great test of the Monitor. 
The men inside the turret heard the balls smash 
against it, and to their great relief found that no dam- 
age was done. At once their spirits rose. There was 
not a spare man in the crew. When they saw that 
the turret would turn, they felt not only safe, but 
believed they would win the fight. The Merrimac 
poured shot after shot at the Monitor, most of which 
passed over her, but many of which struck her. Near- 
ly every shot that the Monitor fired seemed to hit the 
Merrimac, but they did little damage. The Monitor 
fired solid shot, and the Merrimac fired shells. It is 
agreed now that had the Merrimac fired solid shot, or 
had the Monitor used more powder in her guns, each 
of the vessels might have been damaged a great deal. 
The Monitor could fire about once in seven minutes; 
the Merrimac covdd fire only once in about fifteen 
minutes. 

So these two strange ships of war went on shoot- 
ing at each other and turning and twisting about in 
the waters of Hampton Roads. The Monitor could 
go nearly twice as fast as the Merrimac, and thus had 



FIRST FIGHT BETWEEN IRONCLADS. 23 

the advantage in moving about. Soon the Monitor 
began to have difficulty in firing her guns. Chalk 
marks on the floor which showed the direction of the 
bow and stern were soon wiped out, and the place was 
filled with smoke and gases. The speaking tube be- 
tween the pilot house and turret was shot away, and 
orders had to be passed bj word of mouth. A lands- 
man mixed them Tip in repeating them, and this made 
more confusion. The turret machinery did not work 
properly. It was hard to start the turret in motion, 
and harder still to stop it. So the men inside just 
loaded up the guns, opened the portholes, started 
the turret going, and when the Merrimac came in 
sight through the smoke they fired the guns as the 
turret was turning. 

The Monitor did so little damage in her shooting, 
that Lieutenant Worden decided to ram the Merri- 
mac. He wanted to strike her rudder and disable her. 
He missed the rudder by about two feet. The Merri- 
mac got tired of useless shooting also, and started to 
go to fight the Minnesota. She ran aground, however, 
but after awhile got off again. The Monitor could go 
where the Merrimac could not, because she drew less 
water, and while the Merrimac was fast in the mud, 
the Monitor kept moving around her, sliooting at her 
and worrying her officers. When tlie ]\Ierriraac got 
off the mud bank her commander, Lieutenant Jones, 
thought he would try to sink the Monitor by ramming 



24 OUR NAVY IN TIME OP WAR. 

her. Lieutenant AVorden saw what lie was trying to 
do and shifted the Monitor so that only a glancing 
blow was struck. Jones called for men to board 
the Monitor to try to capture her, but before they 
could get ready the Monitor slid off, and, as one of the 
Merrimac's officers said afterward, " was as safe as if 
she had gone to the top of the Blue Ridge Moun- 
tains." 

The ammunition in the turret of the Monitor was 
now so low that she went off into shoal water to re- 
new her supply. She was such a crude affair that she 
could not be fought wdien the men were renewing the 
ammunition. The turret had to remain stationary at 
such a time, while powder and shot were being 
brought through a narrow hatchway in the floor. It 
required fifteen minutes to do this work. The Mer- 
rimac's officers thought the Monitor had given up the 
fight, but they were so interested in watching her that 
they did not attempt to go after the other ships during 
this time. To their surprise, at about 11.30 o'clock 
the Monitor came toward them again. 

It w^as soon after this that a serious accident oc- 
curred to Lieutenant Worden in the Monitor's pilot 
house. One of the Merrimac's shells struck the shut- 
ter of the peephole through which Worden was look- 
ing. The shell burst, and ]iowder and shreds of iron 
filled AVorden's eye? and made him nearly uncon- 
scious. It also injured the other men in the pilot 



FIRST FIGHT BETWEEN IRONCLADS. 25 

house. For fifteen minutes (Jrccne, in (lie tiiiTct, re- 
ceived no orders from Worden, and tlie Monitor was 
drifting abont helplessly. Greene went to the jnlot 
house to see what was the trouble, and found Worden 
blinded and bleeding terribly. He took Worden be- 
low, and placed him on a sofa. Worden asked how 
the fight was going, and when he Avas told said: 
'' Then I die happy." But he did not die, although 
it was a long time before he recovered. Greene then 
went into the pilot house and took charge of the 
Monitor. 

But the fight was nearly over. Lieutenant Jones 
of the Merrimac noticed that his men did not fire as 
often as they could, and he asked wdiy they did not 
shoot more. They said that ammunition was getting 
scarce, and they might as well snap their fingers at the 
Monitor as shoot at her, and so they decided to save 
their powder and shot. The Merrimac was leaking a 
little in the place where the Monitor had struck her, 
and as it was evident that the Monitor was a match 
for her, she gradually drew off and finally w^ent back 
to !N^orfolk, leaving the Monitor in control of the 
scene of battle. The Monitor had fired forty-one 
shots, had been hit twenty-two times, nine of which 
were on the turret and two on the pilot house. In 
the two days' fight the Merrimac had been hit ninety- 
seven times. One of the shots of the Monitor had 
nearly passed through her side, and had a second one 



26 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

struck in the same place it probably would have 
gone through. The wooden backing to her armor 
was broken in several places, but no serious damage 
had been done. 

It was a drawn battle, but really the Monitor had 
won, because she saved the other ships of the North- 
ern side, and the Merrimac had withdrawn from the 
field. ]^ot a man had been killed on either boat dur- 
ing the fight, and neither boat was damaged so that 
she could not have continued fighting. Nevertheless, 
it was the most important naval battle fought in 
modern times. It proved that modern war ships must 
have turrets for their big guns, and also that they 
must have as thick armor as they can carry. From 
that very day war ships have been developed along 
these lines all over the world. The United States, 
therefore, had led the way once more in naval fight- 
ing. 

Twice after this were the Monitor and Merrimac 
close enough to each other to fight, but no shots were 
exchanged. On April 11th, the Merrimac, with six 
gunboats, came out to fight, but the Monitor declined 
battle. Her commander had orders to take no 
chances, and after the gunboats which were with the 
Merrimac had captured three Northern supply boats 
that were lying near the Nortliern fleet, the Merrimac 
and her escorts and jirizes went back to Norfolk. On 
May 8th the Merrimac came down the river again, 



FIRST FIGHT BETWEEN IRONCLADS. 27 

and this time the Monitor was ready for her, but she 
declined battle and went back. 

It was soon seen that Norfolk would be captured 
by the Northern troops. The Southern men took as 
many of the guns and as much of stores out of the 
Merrimac as thej could, so as to lighten her and get 
her over the bar at the mouth of the James Kiver. 
They wanted to use the vessel in protecting Rich- 
mond, the Southern capital. It was found, however, 
that it would be impossible to get her up the river, 
and so on May 11th they blew her up, destroying her 
completely. The Northern men, therefore, did not 
get possession of her. 

But the crew of the Merrimac were still to have 
another fight with the crew of the Monitor. Four 
days later, on May 15th, the Monitor, with the Ga- 
lena, Port Royal, and Naugatuck, went up the James 
River, and had a fight with the Southern batteries 
which were established at Drewry's Bluff. The battle 
lasted four hours, and thirteen men were killed and 
fourteen wounded on the Northern ships, but none 
of the crew on the Monitor was injured. The crew 
of the Merrimac fought on land behind some of the 
guns that had been used on their vessel. 

The fighting days of the Monitor were now over. 
She remained at Hampton Roads until December 29, 
1862, when, in tow of the steamer Rhode Island, she 
started south for Beaufort, N. C, to help in the 



operations near Hatteras Island. She encountered a 
violent gale off Cape Hatteras, and on the night of 
December 30th it was seen that she must sink. The 
Rhode Island's men rescued nearly all the crew at 
great risk to their own lives. Sixteen of the Monitor's 
crew, who, it is said, were " dazed and terrified," re- 
fused to leave the turret, and went down with the 
ship. Thus ended the career of a noble vessel and the 
careers of some of her noble crew. 

Besides saving the Northern ships the Monitor 
had done another great work; she had preserved the 
control of the Chesapeake to the ^orth, and had also 
kept the Potomac open, so that Washington should 
not be attacked by any vessel that the South might 
build. That was one of the first and important things 
that the navy had to do in the long fight with the 
South. Washington must be protected, and the ap- 
proaches to it by water must be kept in the control of 
the ^N'orth. It was a long and hard task to make 
the South abandon the Potomac Piver as the north- 
ern frontier of its operations. It was on May 31, 
1861, nearly a year before the Monitor arrived south, 
that the first fight occurred along the Potomac in the 
effort to drive the Southern forces- away from Wash- 
ington. It might also be called the first naval bat- 
tle of the war. 

The Southern men had built a land battery at 
Acquia Creek, almost within sight of Washington, 



FIRST FIGHT BETWEEN IRONCLADS. 



29 



and Flag-Officer James H. Ward was ordered to go 
down and destroy the works. He had three small 
vessels, the Freeborn, Anacostia, and Resolute. The 




Cape Qhcmlea 



Norfolk 1 



The Chesapeake and tributaries. 



30 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

firing began at 10.30 o'clock at niglit. The ^N^ortliern 
boats had seven small guns on them, and the South- 
ern men had thn^teen guns, somewhat larger than those 
on the boats, in the land battery. The firing was kept 
up for a large part of the night and was renewed the 
next day, lasting five hours, l^o one was killed. One 
Southern man lost a finger, and Captain S. C. Rowan, 
who with the Pawnee had joined Flag-Officer Ward, 
received a scratch on the face from a splinter. Neither 
side won a victory. 

On June 27, 1861, Ward, with the Freeborn, Re- 
liance, and Pawnee, went down to Matthias Point to 
attack some earthworks there. The firing began about 
nine o'clock in the morning, and Flag-Ofiicer Ward 
was killed. He was the first officer of high rank in the 
navy to lose his life in the civil war. 

All during that summer and the next fall the 
Northern ships patrolled the Potomac. They had 
frequent engagements with Southern forces along the 
banks. Northern men were killed and wounded sev- 
eral times, but little by little the Southern men were 
driven away, and when the Monitor had opened the 
Chesapeake and the Potomac to Northern ships, the 
Southern forces had to fall back and no longer 
threaten the national capital by water. 

It was the Monitor, therefore, that helped to make 
Washington safe, and as we take final leave of her and 
her brave crew, it should be a pleasure to read this 



FIRST FIGHT BETWEEN IRONCLADS. 31 

letter, wliicli the crew sent to Worden in Washington, 
where he had gone to restore his health, and which, 
with all its bad grammar, shows better than anything 
else the kind of men who served their country so well 
on that vessel : 

Dear and Honored Captain. 

Dear Sir: These few lines is from the crew of 
the Monitor, with their kindest love to you their 
Honored Captain, hoping to God that they will have 
the pleasure of welcoming you back to us again soon, 
for we are all ready able and willing to meet Death 
or anything else, only give us back our Captain again. 
Dear CJaptain, we have got your pilot house fixed and 
all ready for you when you get well again; and we 
all sincerely hope that soon we will have the pleasure 
of welcoming you back to it. We are waiting very 
patiently to engage our Antagonist if we could only 
get a chance to do so. The last time she came out we 
all thought we would have the Pleasure of sinking 
her. But we all got disappointed, for we did not 
fire one shot and the Norfolk papers says we are cow- 
ards in the Monitor — and all we want is a chance to 
show them where it lies with you for our Captain 
We can teach them who is cowards. But there is a 
great deal that we would like to write you but we 
think you will soon be with us again yourself. But 
we all join in with our kindest love to you, hoping 
that God will restore you to us again and hoping 
that your sufferings is at an end now, and we are 
all so glad to hear that your eyesight will be spaired to 



32 



OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 



you again. We would wish to write more to you if 
we have your kind Permission to do so but at pres- 
ent we all conclude by tendering to you our kindest 
Love and aifection, to our Dear and Honored Cap- 
tain. 

We remain untill Death your Affectionate Crew 

The Monitok Boys. 



F 




Destruction of the United States man-of-war Cumberland 
by the Confederate ram Merrimac. 



CHAPTEK III. 

FIGHTING ALONG THE ATLANTIC COAST. 

"When the civil war began, the United States had 
sixty-nine ships fit for service. The home squadron, 
however, was made up of only five sailing ships and 
seven steamers; of these twelve vessels only three 
were available for instant service. The other war 
ships were scattered in various parts of the world. It 
took months and months to get the ships back home. 
Exactly three hundred and twenty-two officers re- 
signed from the navy and went into the service of the 
South, but the South had no navy. During the war 
it got together a lot of queer boats, but in the main 
the Xorth, with its navy, which finally grew to about 
five hundred boats of all sorts, had to fight the forts 
of the South along the Atlantic coast and the Gulf of 
Mexico and up the Mississippi and other rivers flow- 
ing into it. That was the great work of the navy in 
the conflict. In addition, the navy blockaded the en- 
tire coast of the South, a task the like of which was 
never known before. The South had no manufac- 
tures, and bv shutting up its ports and preventing it 
' 33 



34 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

from sending cotton to Europe and from receiving 
supplies, even medicines for the sick being cut off, the 
Xorth dealt it a hard blow. By opening the Missis- 
sippi Kiver and keeping it open, the armies of the 
South were cut off from many supplies. 

It was not until late in the summer of 1861 that 
the North began naval work in real earnest. Two 
very large expeditions were sent out from Norfolk 
that year; one was known as the Hatteras expedition, 
and the other as the Port Royal expedition. The Hat- 
teras expedition was to seize the coasts and inland 
sounds along the State of North Carolina. It sailed 
from Hampton Roads on August 26, 1861, under 
Commodore Stringham. He had seven ships, on 
which were one hundred and fifty-eight guns. There 
were three transports with the fleet, carrying nine 
hundred soldiers under Major-General B. F. Butler. 
This fleet arrived at Hatteras Inlet, just below Cape 
Hatteras, the next day, and on August 28 th the work 
of landing troops began on the ocean front of the 
long strip of sand from which Cape Hatteras juts out. 
There were two forts covering Hatteras Inlet, Forts 
Clark and Hatteras. Fort Clark guarded the ap- 
proach from the ocean, and was a small earthwork. 
Fort Hatteras protected the inlet. The surf was so 
high that the iron boats in which the Northern men 
landed were tossed on the beach and only three hun- 
dred soldiers got ashore. They had to stay there all 




Chicamacomico 
O 



The North Carolina Sounds. 



36 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

day and all night in tlie rain without food or protec- 
tion. The war shij)s fired at Fort Glark until the men 
there abandoned it. The next morning the men in 
Fort Hatteras fled into Avhat they called a bombproof, 
a place covered by earth, where ammunition was 
stored, and where men could be safe from big cannon 
balls. The bombardment by the ships had made them 
leave their guns. One of the shells from the fleet en 
tered a ventilator to the bombproof, and caused a ter- 
rible panic among the men there. They thought that 
they would all be killed, and they rushed out and 
soon the fort surrendered. The Xorth captured six 
hundred and fifteen prisoners. This was really the 
first victory of the I^orth in the civil war. The 
Northern forces did not lose a man. 

It was soon decided to send a regiment to the upper 
end of Hatteras Island to keep the Southern men 
from landing there and marching down on the North- 
ern soldiers. A little boat called the Fannie went 
along up the sound with supplies for the troops. 
When the soldiers reached the upper end of the island 
some Southern vessels captured the Fannie, the boat 
having been cut off from the land -forces by shoal 
water, and a large number of Southern troops tried to 
capture the Indiana regiment which had marched up 
to the end of the island. The Southern men tried to 
land soldiers behind the Northern troops as well as in 
front of them. The Northern men saw the trap, and 



FIGHTING ALONG THE ATLANTIC COAST. 37 

tlieii there began a race along the sandy shore of forty 
miles between the N^orthern troops and the Sonthern 
steamers on the sonnd inside the Ilatteras strip of 
sand. The steamers were delayed and the Northern 
troops won the race, after being chased all the way by 
the Sonthern troops who had been landed above them. 

When the racing forces reached Cape Ilatteras, 
the Northern vessel Monticello, ont in the ocean, saw 
what was going on and began to shell the Southern sol- 
diers. The Southern men tried to get on board their 
ships on the inside of the island, but before they suc- 
ceeded in doing tliat many of them w^ere killed. Two 
sloop loads of them were sunk by shells which struck 
the little vessels, and nearly every one on board the 
vessels was killed or drowned. That ended the fight- 
ing on the Ilatteras sand strip. 

The time had now come for the Port Royal ex- 
pedition. It started out from Hampton Eoads on 
October 29, 1861, and consisted of more than fifty 
vessels. It was a curious collection. It was made 
up mostly of tugboats and ferryboats, with several 
large war ships and army transports thrown in. This 
description has been given of its start: 

" High plumes of smoke, looking almost like black 
battle flags, rose and waved over the steamers. The 
rigging of the sailing ships was full of busy sailors. 
Soon the waters were dashed into foam by the wheels 
and ^ brazen fins ' of the steamers. Fifty ships 



38 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

stretching seaward in one squadron, bearing tlie 
American flag, had not been seen before, and it was 
a sight to warm an American heart." 

On the way to Port Royal, which was to be cap- 
tured so that the North might have a port where its 
ships could be coaled and repaired, a terrible storm 
arose. The ships were all scattered, and one of them, 
the Governor, went down; but, fortunately, all those 
on board, except seven, were rescued by the war ship 
Sabine. Many of the men on the Governor, however, 
had to jump into the ocean, from which they were 
rescued by small boats. It was not until November 
4th that the ships began to straggle in. There were 
twelve thousand troops on the transports with the ex- 
pedition. The bar off Port Royal was ten miles out 
to sea, and finally all the ships got over it. 

The entrance to Port Royal harl)or is two and one 
half miles wide. On the southern side of the en- 
trance was Fort Walker; on the northern side was 
Fort Beauregard. Both forts were under command 
of General Thomas Drayton. Captain Percival Dray- 
ton, General Drayton's brother, was in command of 
the Northern war ship Pocahontas, and so, as at the 
Monitor and Merrimac fight, two brothers were fight- 
ing against each other. 

Flag-Officer Dupont, who had charge of the naval 
forces, formed his fighting ships into two squadrons. 
They moved inside the harbor firing on the forts as 



FIGHTING ALONG THE ATLANTIC COAST. 39 

they went. One squadron was composed of small 
boats, and after it passed into the bay it remained there 
watching for Commodore Tatnall, of the Southern 




Pocahontas \ \ ^ Ji^K .\ 

\ ''y<^ 



Diagram of the battle of Port Royal. 



navy, who had three or four small boats hidden in 
those waters. The main fleet, with the Wabash in 
the lead, turned after it had gone inside and began to 
pass out again. The forts were not built to shoot up 



40 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

the harbor, and the Xorthern ships did great damage 
to them while passing out to sea. Again the procession 
moved inside the bay and again it j^assed out. Finally 
only three guns on Fort Walker were fit for use, and it 
was abandoned. Later in the day Fort Beauregard 
on the northern side of the inlet was also abandoned. 
The total number of killed on the war ships was eight ; 
the killed in Fort AValker nundjered ten. One of the 
humorous things about the fight had to do with the 
Unadilla, one of the I^orthern . war shij^s. Her ma- 
chinery got out of order and the engineers could not 
stop her. She signaled to the other vessels to move out 
of the way, and Admiral Ammen, in writing about it 
afterward, said it reminded him of " the droll song of 
the man with the cork leg that would not let him 
tarry." 

This fight, like that at Fort Ilatteras, was a most 
important victory for the Nortlj, an<l it was won much 
in the same way, by keeping the ships in motion while 
they were attacking the forts. But tlie hardest part 
of the struggle along those dreary and lonely shores 
of the Atlantic was yet to come. It was necessary 
in all sorts of weather to go up the hundreds of bays 
and rivers, through swamps and marshes, in order to 
destroy numerous forts and earthworks, and to out 
off that part of the South from receiving supplies by 
the ocean or from recapturing the forts that were 
taken. More than a year was occujficd in various 




aiaui.A.rt,„i^iAW>,.\.!.k\.. 



.«,jii;:;[i:3i;:^irjiiiii:iJtLHi iti«):i'''i'.'.'V-j<'.iMi'"'j'J 



42 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

expeditions of this kind with Hatteras Island or Port 
Royal as a base. It was dreary work, and Avas largely 
a fight of weeks and months between forces on ships 
and forces on land; it was navy against army. Many 
acts of bravery were performed by individuals, and 
the heroism shown was of the kind that consists large- 
ly in using pure grit without having any chance to 
reveal its real quality. 

The most important of these secondary expedi- 
tions was the one to Roanoke Island, just north of Hat- 
teras Island, and inside the strip of sand that runs 
along the ocean. Admiral Goldsborough was in 
charge of the navy in this affair and with him was 
General A. E. Burnside, who had twelve thousand 
soldiers on transports. This expedition started from 
[N^orfolk in January, 1862. There were one hundred 
and twenty vessels in it of all sorts. Practically none 
was fit for ocean service. They had to be of light 
draught, so as to get over the bars. All had tre- 
mendous guns on them, really too large for the boats. 
As in the case of the Port Royal expedition, a big 
storm arose, but all the boats reached shelter inside the 
Hatteras sand strip with the exception of two small 
ones, of which one was the Pocahontas, carrying a 
lot of horses. This vessel was lost. On February 5, 
1862, the expedition started from Hatteras Island 
up the Pamlico Sound to capture Roanoke Island. 
There were six forts on the island and the lower end 



FIGHTING ALONG THE ATLANTIC COAST. 43 

of it was a marsh. At tlie upper end of the island the 
Southern forces had assembled a fleet of half a dozen 
small gunboats, which were hidden behind a lot of 




Scene of the battle of Roanoke Island. 



sunken vessels and piles. Admiral Goldsborough's 

ships shelled the forts while the troops landed halfway 
5 



44 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

up the island. The fighting lasted two days. Ten 
thousand N^orthern troops who had been fighting over- 
came five thousand Southern troops, and the North- 
ern vessels broke through the barrier, across the sound 
from Koanoke Island to the mainland, and put the 
Southern vessels to flight. The navy itself had six 
men killed, and the army had forty-one killed. The 
I^^orthern forces took twenty-six hundred and seventy- 
five Southern men prisoners. 

The Southern ships, in the effort to escape, ran up 
the Pasquotank River to Elizabeth City in E^orth 
Carolina, where the Dismal Swamp Canal to Nor- 
folk had an outlet. The Northern ships were almost 
out of powder and shot. It was necessary to sink the 
Southern ships, which were drawn up in line across 
the river behind Cobb's Point, by collision. The 
Southern ships began to shoot at the Northern ships 
when the latter apj^roached, a day or two after the 
Roanoke Island fight, but the Northern vessels re- 
served their ammunition and came up slowly. When 
within a few hundred yards of the Southern boats 
Commander Rowan, of the Northern flotilla, set this 
signal : 

" Make dash at the enemy.'' 

The dozen Northern ships did dash at the seven 
Southern vessels. There were collisions and hand- 
to-hand fighting; in fifteen minutes four of the 
Southern steamers were destroyed, one was cap- 



FIGHTING ALONG THE ATLANTIC COAST. 45 

tured, and two put to flight up the Dismal Swamp 
Canal. 

The fleeing Southern soldiers and sailors in the 
town set fire to many of the houses, "but the Northern 
troops and sailors landing, soon put out the -fires and 
saved much property. 

Another very important expedition grew out of 
the effort to keep the inland waters of North Carolina 
in possession of the North. It was an expedition up 
the Neuse Kiver to Newbern. A force of thirteen 
vessels, with transports conveying part of General 
Burnside's army, went up the river on March 12, 
1862. The following morning the troops were landed 
at a place called Slocum's Creek. The city of New- 
bern was well defended. There were six forts along 
the river, and below them two lines of obstructions 
against war ships. The first of these obstructions con- 
sisted of double piling. Part of the piles were ver- 
tical, and part were pointed down stream and had 
iron caps on them. All were under water. In 
front of this double row of piles there were fastened 
thirty torpedoes. Farther up the river there was an- 
other row of obstructions, consisting of twenty-four 
vessels which had been sunk, forming a complete bar- 
rier across the river. It did not seem possible for any 
boats to break through. 

The fighting to capture Newbern occupied two 
days, March 13th and 14th. The Northern war ships 



46 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

below the barriers in the river shelled the forts, and 
the marching Northern troops on land stormed them 
one by one. The Southern soldiers fled from fort 
after fort, and finally, on the second day, the war ships 
broke through the barriers. This was not accom- 
plished, however, until Commander Rowan, in charge 
of the ships, showed great bravery. He set this sig- 
nal: 

" Follow me." 

The ships did follow him. Swiftly over the tor- 
pedoes the vessels went. None of the torpedoes ex- 
ploded. Sharp against the iron-tipped piles the vessels 
dashed. Three of the ships were damaged severely, 
but all were able to stay afloat and pass through the 
barrier. While the troops were carrying everything 
before them, the fleet swept up the river against the 
second barrier and carried that away. Soon both army 
and navy were in possession of the town. In this fight 
only two men were killed and eleven wounded on the 
ships. An expedition followed to Fort Macon in 
Beaufort harbor, near Cape Lookout. The ships 
bombarded this while the army captured it. There 
were small expeditions to Hamilton, Washington, 
Franklin, Onslow, Jacksonville, and other towns, in 
which great bravery was shown by the men who went 
Dn them, and in one of which, that to Onslow, Lieu- 
tenant William B. Cushing, of whom we shall hear 
something later, distinguished himself by his bravery 



FIGHTING ALONG THE ATLANTIC COAST. 47 

in escaping with a few companions in an open boat 
down the Kiver Onslow, nnder a heavy fire from 
shore, after his own boat, the Ellis, had been lost 
throngh a mistake of the pilot in running her into 
shoal water. By the fall of 1862, however, the Xorth 
Carolina sounds and adjacent waters were in complete 
possession of the North. 

From the Port Koyal base many expeditions were 
sent into nearby sounds, rivers, creeks, and swamps. 
Many lives were lost in these ventures, which 
might be called rowboat expeditions. No braver or 
harder work was done in the entire war than was done 
by the men who went on these trips. The forts 
and forces in upper Florida, with Fernandina as a 
base, were destroyed, and little by little the earth- 
works and fortifications on the many inlets in the en- 
tire swam]:>y region that could be reached from Port 
Royal were battered down. All this ended in the 
capture of Fort Pulaski on Tybee Island at the mouth 
of the Savannah River, in April, 1 SC)?,. The ships had 
surrounded the fort, but could not get near it, and it 
was necessary to drag cannon through the swamps on 
wooden supports that were half rafts and half rail- 
roads, so that the forts might be shelled. Eleven bat- 
teries were placed around the fort, and after two days' 
shelling it surrendered. This was the first time that 
rifled guns were used against a modern fort, and the 
fight showed that the day of stone forts was over, just 



48 



OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 



as the figlit between the Monitor *aiid Merrimac had 
showed that the day of wooden war ships had passed. 
The ^N^orth, through the navy, had made a great 
advance by this time. On the Atlantic coast only the 
important ports of Wilmington, Charleston, and Sa- 
vannah remained in possession of the South. Key 
West always remained in possession of the Xorth, as 
did Fort Pickens, in Pensacola harbor. Mobile Bay 
and the Mississippi were still in the South's possession, 
and it was against the ports along the Atlantic and in 
the Gulf and up the Mississippi and its tributaries that 
the heaviest work of the navy was yet to be done. 




The Union navy flotilla co-operating with the land force in 
the attack on Fort Macon. 



CHAPTEK IV. 

UP THE MISSISSIPPI FAERAGUT APPEARS. 

The Gulf of Mexico early became the scene of 
war. Southern forces had seized the navy yard at 
PensacoLa, and the three forts in that harbor, Pickens, 
McKae, and Barrancas, were in danger of being cap- 
tured. The sloop of war Brooklyn was sent to the aid 
of the forts with an artillery company, and on March 
31, 1861, tried to land the soldiers. The authorities in 
the navy yard forbade it, despite the orders of the Gov- 
ernment at Washington, and it became necessary to 
send orders there again. Lieutenant Worden, who 
fought later in the Monitor, was selected to take these 
orders. He tore up the written orders, having com- 
mitted them to memory, and got through the Southern 
lines, saying that he had a mere verbal message for the 
commander of the Brooklyn. At once, after his ar- 
rival, all the Northern troops available in the station 
were sent to Port Pickens, which remained in pos- 
session of the Xorth for the rest of the war. "Worden 
was captured in .\hd)ama on his way back and held a 
prisoner for seven months before he was released. The 



50 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

war ship Colorado blockaded the harbor of Pensacola 
after that, and on September 13, 1861, nearly one 
hundred of her men in small boats did a brave thing in 
invading the navy yard, and in destroying a vessel, 
called the Judah, which was being made ready, in 
plain sight of Fort Pickens, to destroy or capture the 
commerce of the North. Such vessels when owned 
and operated by private persons are called privateers. 

Farther along on the Gulf there had been some 
fighting at Galveston; the blockading vessel, South 
Carolina, had fired on a battery near the city in an- 
swer to some shots from the battery. That was on 
August 31, 1861. A few weeks later Lieutenant 
Jouett entered the harbor of Galveston with a party 
in small boats, and although three men were killed 
and six Avounded out of the forty men with him, the 
vessel Royal Yacht, which was also being fitted out to 
prey on l^orthern commerce, was destroyed. 

Just before this brave act by Jouett and his men 
there occurred what has been called the " Bull Run 
of the navy." It was an occasion which did not re- 
flect credit upon the officers of the United States 
navy. Such events are so rare that the story should 
be told, because it brings out all the clearer the true 
spirit of the naval officers. The Mississippi River 
had been blockaded by four A^essels Avhich were sta- 
tioned up the river at the place where it branches and 
forms a delta, flowing into the Gulf through several 



52 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

moutlis. The plan was to prevent ships from getting 
in or out of the river. There were four ships of war 
on watch. They were the flagship Richmond, the 
sloop Vincennes, the sloop Preble, and the little screw 
steamer Water Witch. Altogether they had forty-five 
guns, nearly one half of which were of very high 
grade. There had been rumors that the South was 
building some war ships up the river, and a watch was 
kept for them also. One of these was a ram — the 
South built a good many vessels of this kind — called 
the Manassas. She was simply a big ocean-going tug 
that once belonged in Boston. The upper works had 
been cut down and an oval deck or roof of thick oak 
had been built on her. She had one sixty-eight- 
pounder gun. There was only one ' little hatchway 
through which the crew could pass in or out. Her 
engines would scarcely go, her gun wouldn't shoot, 
and altogether she was the crudest engine of war yet 
seen afloat in the war. But the officers on the watch- 
ing Northern boats were frightened about her. An 
awful bogie man could not have scared a lot of chil- 
dren worse. 

It was 3.30 A. M. on October 13, 1861, that the 
lookout on the Preble called out: 

" Here comes the rebel ram ! " 

Sure enough she was coming. She was swinging 
down stream with the tide, and she struck the Rich- 
mond a glancing blow and made a small hole in her 



UP THE MISSISSIPPI— FARRAGUT APPEARS. 53 

side. That was all the damage she did. The North- 
ern squadron had a terrible fright. The Kichmond 
and Preble each fired broadsides at the awful mon- 
ster, and then all the Northern boats tried to run 
away. Just then three fire rafts were seen coming 
down the river. The Richmond and Yincennes ran 
aground. The fire rafts ran ashore and did no 
damage, but Captain Pope, of the Pichmond, was 
not going to take any chances, and he set the sig- 
nal " Cross the bar." Captain Handy, of the Yin- 
cennes, was so anxious to get out of harm's way 
that he read the signal " Abandon shi])," which 
he started to do at once. lie laid a mine to Llow 
up his vessel, and then in a pompous way, as though 
he were playing a part in a play in a cheap theater, 
he wrapped himself in the flag and left the shi]). A 
sailor, lu'ave man that he was, ]>ut Handy to shame by 
destroying tln^ ])urning fuse that was to blow up the 
ship, and Handy had to go back to his vessel. Later 
in the day he asked permission to abandon the Yin- 
cennes again, but Pope would not permit it. They 
had a hard time to get the shi])s over the bar and out 
to sea, where they felt safer, ])ut they did not feel 
comfortable until they had sent the Preble to Barra- 
taria to get the South Carolina to come and help 
them. The transport ^IcClennan also arrived, but 
the teeth of the commander of the Preble still chat- 
tered, and finally he asked permission to go to Ship 



54 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

Island to get " wood for the ship's galley." The men 
on the Manassas, after the collision with the Rich- 
mond, found that the craft's engines were put out 
of order, and they were afraid they would be at- 
tacked while they were helpless. At last they got 
the engines to working and slowly crept up the 
river, while the Northern vessels were running away 
to sea. 

Surely it was time for a strong man to appear in 
that region. That man did appear soon. His name 
was David Glasgow Farragut, one of the greatest 
names in the history of the United States navy. He 
was born in the South, but refused to leave the coun- 
try's service when the war came. He had fought on 
the Essex under Commodore Porter in the War of 
1812, and had served steadily since in the navy. Com- 
modore Porter's son, David D. Porter, a commander 
in the navy, recommended that Farragut be appointed 
to command a fleet to open the Mississippi, and Far- 
ragut left Washington, where he had been engaged 
in minor duty, and appeared off the mouths of the 
Mississippi in his flagship Hartford, on February 20, 
1862, having sailed from Hampton Eoads on Feb- 
ruary 2d. 

By the middle of April Farragut had gathered a 
squadron of seventeen ships, which mounted ninety- 
three guns that could be fired in broadside. None of 
the guns could be fired directly ahead. Farragut also 



UP THE MISSISSIPPI-FARRAGUT APPEARS. 65 

collected twenty mortar boats and six little gunboats 
to protect them. He had a difficult time in getting 
the larger vessels of his squadron over the bar, and 
one of them, the Colorado, could not be pulled over 
because of the shallow water. Twenty miles up the 
Mississippi were two fine forts. One was Fort St. 
Philip, and the other Fort Jackson. The river runs 
northeast where these forts were situated, and Fort St. 
Philip was on what might be called the northern 
bank. Fort Jackson was on the southern bank. The 
forts were only eight hundred yards distant from each 
other, and together they mounted one hundred and 
nine guns, of which only about fifteen were of the 
best kind. These had come from the I^orfolk I^avy 
Yard. 

Farragut had orders to pass these forts with his 
ships. 'No such deed had ever been done before in 
war. The Southern officials thought that such an at- 
tempt would be made, and early in the year they placed 
across the river a barrier of thick cypress logs held in 
place by large anchors. A flood liad come down the 
river and had broken the barrier in one place, but it 
was patched up by sinking seven small schooners in 
place of the logs that were swept away. In addition 
to all these defenses the South had eleven steamers 
converted into war ships, and they also had what they 
called a floating battery. The name of this battery 
was the Louisiana, This vessel had sixteen large-sized 



56 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

guns on it behind thick armor, but she was not fin- 
ished when Farragut appeared in the river, and she 
had to be towed to a place near the forts so that she 
could take part in the fighting. In addition to the 
various boats the Southern forces had, they had several 
fire rafts which were to be sent down the river blazing 
against the Korthei-n ships. 

Farragut began active work on April 16, 1862. 
Before he got safely above the two forts one of the 
most thrilling contests ever known in war took place. 
It was marked by great bravery on both sides. The 
first step that Farragut took in his plan to force his 
way up the river was to anchor his mortar schooners 
a short distance below the forts. He took limbs of 
trees and dressed up their masts and thus disguised 
the ships. Three of his officers had surveyed secretly 
the exact distances from the places on each side of the 
river, where the mortar boats were anchored, to the 
forts, and on the morning of April 18th the bombard- 
ment from the mortar boats began. The shells were 
thrown high in the air and were dropped into the forts. 
The firing lasted day and night for six days. Each 
boat fired a shot every ten minutes in the daytime 
and every thirty minutes in the nighttime. About 
nineteen hundred shells were fired every day from 
these mortar boat^^. This bombardment kept the men 
in the forts stirred up all the time, and frequently 
the gunners had to flee to bombproofs to seek safety. 



58 OUfl NAVY IN TIME OP WAR. 

Altogether fourteen men in the forts were killed in 
the bombardment. 

Farragut felt that it was now time to take his 
seagoing ships up the river. He sent two of the 
smaller ships, the Itasca and the Pinola, up the stream 
on the night of April 20th, to break down the bar- 
rier. The chains holding one of the schooners in the 
barrier were slipped and the schooner drifted down 
the river. The Itasca passed through the gap, turned 
about, and came down at full speed. She struck the 
chains that held the remaining schooners together and 
made a larger opening. This left a good-sized space 
in the barrier, large enough for Farragut's ships to 
pass in single file. 

Early in the morning of April 24th two little red 
lights were hoisted to the masthead of Farragut's flag- 
ship, the Hartford, as a signal for the squadron to get 
under way. Farragut wanted to lead the fleet, but 
his captains persuaded him to place the largest of the 
ships in the middle of the procession, sending the 
smaller ones first and also allowing other small ones to 
bring up the rear. The ships were separated into 
three divisions, and Captain Theodorus Bailey, in the 
Cayuga, had the honor of leading the procession. 
Farragut, on the Hartford, led the second division. 
The lookouts on the forts soon saw what was coming. 
Alarms were sounded, shot and shell were secured 
and piled up near the guns, and by the time that the 



UP THE MISSISSIPPI— FARRAGUT APPEARS. 59 

Cajuga passed tlirongh the gap in the barrier the 
great fight began. Monster bonfires were ligiitecl on 
the banlvs, the shells from the mortar boats down the 
river were screaming in midair, flashes of lightning 
were darting from the guns, and soon a great mass of 
black smoke began to settle on the river between the 
two forts. To enter this black cloud, and in the night, 
seemed not only like passing into the jaws of death, 
but also like going into a tomb. The smoke, however, 
protected the vessels of the first division of the fleet 
from serious damage, and they ran by the forts with- 
out much difficulty. It was after they got above the 
forts that they had their exciting time. 

It was just before four o'clock in the morning 
when Farragut, leading the second division, swept 
past Fort St. Philip. The smoke was so thick that, as 
he discharged a broadside, he received little damage 
in return. Soon a more terrible enemy appeared. It 
was a fire raft pushed by a tug called the llosher. 
Farragut tried to sheer off, but the current caught 
him, and ran his frigate hard and fast on a mud bank. 
He was so close to Fort St. Philip that the gunners 
could be heard talking in the fort. His ship was rec- 
ognized by his flag on the mizzenmast, but the vessel 
was so close to the fort that the shots that were fired 
at him nearly all passed over him. The flames 
from the fire raft, hoAvever, leaped up the side of his 
vessel, into the portholes and up the rigging, and 




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UP THE MISSISSIPPI— FARRAGUT APPEARS. 61 

there was great danger that the ship would be burned. 
Farragut is said to have exclaimed: 

" My God! is it to end in this way! '' 
Recovering himself at once, he shouted sternly: 
'^ Don't flinch from that fire, hojs; there is a hot- 
ter fire for those who don't do their duty! " 

A stream of water was brought to play on the fire, 
and fortunately it was put out, but not until a shot 
had sunk the tug Mosher and its brave men, all of 
whom Avere lost. The engines of the Hartford were 
reversed, and the ship backed out of the mud and 
passed up the river beyond the forts, without further 
serious damage. 

It was about four o'clock in the morning when 
Captain Bailey, on the Cayuga, and leading the first 
squadron, got clear of the forts and the smoke bank. 
He looked back and could not see one of the ships 
behind him. In front of him were eleven Southern 
gunboats. Three of them came for him at full speed. 
He fired a shot and crippled one of them, which had 
to run ashore. A second shot crippled another of the 
vessels, and then help arrived. The Yaruna, the fastest 
of the ^^orthern vessels, and fifth in the line, passed 
the forts and smoke, and, with a shot, sent off the third 
of the vessels that were after the Cayuga. Then be- 
gan one of the most exciting fights seen during the 
war. The South had two very fast vessels in its 
fleet. They were furnished by the State of Louisiana, 



62 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

and were called the Governor Moore and the 
McRae. Lieutenant Beverly Kennon, in command 
of the Moore, and Commander Thomas B. Hnger, in 
charge of the McBae, put after the Varuna. The 
Yaruna and the Moore, going at full speed, left the 
McRae behind, and that vessel turned down stream 
and met the Northern steamer Iroquois, which only a 
few months before Huger himself had commanded. 
A broadside from the Iroquois killed Huger and sent 
the McRae down to the forts for protection. Mean- 
while the Moore was overhauling the Yaruna, Ken- 
non having used oil on his fires to get up more steam 
and additional speed. Shot after shot from the Ya- 
runa kept piercing the Moore, but still that vessel held 
on. Finally Kennon, in his effort to cripple the 
Yaruna, fired his bow gun through the deck of his own 
vessel in order to make a porthole for a second shot. 
This shot did some damage, but just at that time the 
commander of the Yaruna turned his vessel broadside, 
and the Moore rammed the Yaruna twice. The 
Yaruna, however, had practically shot the Moore to 
pieces. Fifty-seven of the crew of the Southern boat 
had been killed, and she drifted ashore and burned 
there. When the Yaruna had shaken off the Moore, 
she was rammed on the other side by a Southern 
ram called the Stonewall Jackson. The Yaruna 
was now sinking fast, and her commander ran her 
on the river bank, where she sank, her crew fir- 



Q4: OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

iiig lier guns until the water nearly covered the 
cannon. 

All the N^orthern vessels had an exciting time, 
but probably the Brooklyn suffered the most. That 
vessel found it difficult to pass through the barrier of 
logs below the forts, having missed the way in the. 
smoke. At one time Captain Craven, her com- 
mander, thought that he would have to anchor be- 
tween the forts and be shot to pieces there. He was 
determined not to go back. His vessel's engines, 
which had stopped, began to work again, however, and 
the ship passed on. The Brooklyn was right behind 
the Hartford, and when Craven saw Farragut's vessel 
aground, he stopped to help out Farragut by shooting 
at the forts. He passed within one hundred feet of 
Fort St. Philip, and the flashes from the Southern 
cannon scorched the faces of the gunners on the 
Brooklyn. Then the Brooklyn exchanged broad- 
sides with the floating l)attery Louisiana, but was 
damaged little. The floating battery didn't seem to 
be hurt at all. I^^ext a cry of alarm ran through 
the Brooklyn that the ram Manassas was coming 
down the river. The Manassas struck the Brooklyn 
a glancing blow, and did considerable damage to 
the !N^orthern ship. A man came out on deck of 
the Manassas to see the effect of the collision. 
This man suddenly toppled over and fell into 
the water. An officer on the Brooklyn asked 



UP THE MISSISSIPPI— FARRAGUT APPEARS. 65 

the quartermaster if lie had seen the man fall. He 
replied: 

" Yes, I saw him fall ; in fact, I helped him. I 
hit him on the head with my lead." 

The Brooklyn finally passed the forts and de- 
stroyed several of the small Southern gamboats up the 
river. The ram Manassas followed the Brooklyn up 
the river, but was seen by two Northern boats, the 
Mississippi and Kineo. They went after the Manassas 
and her crew ran her ashore and escaped. The Mis- 
sissippi fired a broadside into her and fairly blew 
her out of the mud. She floated down the river, 
and while passing the mortar boats below the 
forts sank. Only three of the Southern vessels 
escaped that fate. It was bright day by this time, 
and all of Farragut's vessels, exce23t three little 
ones, the Itasca, the Winona, and the Pinola, had 
passed the forts. The loss on the JSTorthern fleet was 
thirty-seven killed and one hundred and forty-seven 
wounded; the loss on the Southern boats was never 
known, but it was larger than on the I^orthern boats. 

The hardest part of opening the Mississippi River 
from the sea had now been accomplished. On the 
next day, April 25th, New Orleans surrendered to 
Farragut. Forts St. Philip and Jackson also yielded. 
A few days later Baton Rouge and Natchez also sur- 
rendered, and finally, on June 18th, Farragut and 
his fleet, including the mortar schooners, arrived be- 



66 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

low Vicksburg. On June 26tli Commander Porter, 
with his mortar boats, began to shell the earthworks 
on the high bluffs of Vicksburg. At three o'clock in 
the morning of June 28th Farragut started to run 
by the batteries, as he had gone by the forts below 
New Orleans. He placed his three strongest vessels, 
the Richmond, Hartford, and Brooklyn, in one line 
nearest the batteries. 

The smaller vessels of the squadron were placed in 
line on the outside of the first column. The land bat- 
teries began a fierce fire and Farragut, thinking he 
was too far in advance, slowed down his ships, so as 
to help the others. Captain Palmer, of the Iroquois, 
who was at the head of the outside column, saw Far- 
ragut stop, and thought the flagship must be in 
trouble. Palmer therefore let his ship drift back into 
the fight. Farragut saw this, but did not understand 
Palmer's motives. He seized a trumpet and shouted 
to Palmer: 

" Captain Palmer, what do you mean by disobey- 
ing my orders? " 

Palmer replied that he thought Farragut was in 
distress and had come back to help him. Farragut 
never forgot that deed, so touched was he by Palmer's 
devotion. By six o'clock in the morning all tlie 
vessels, except three, had passed the batteries. The 
three remained behind through a mistake. Farragut 
met Flag-Ofiicer Davis, of the fleet of boats that had 



UP THE MISSISSIPPI— FARRAGUT APPEARS. 67 

been operating in the npper Mississippi, and tliat had 
made its way down as far as Vicksburg. The opera- 
tions of this upper fleet will be told about in another 
chapter. Farragut lost seven killed and thirty 
wounded in passing Yicksburg. 

Two weeks after Farragut and Davis had joined 
their forces, an expedition of three vessels was sent 
up the Yazoo River to find out something about 
a Southern ram called the Arkansas, which was 
being built up there. The three vessels met the 
ram boldly coming down the stream. The ram 
put them all to flight, and then came right down 
among the Northern ships. Like all the Southern 
rams her machinery was almost useless, and she 
could go only a little faster than the current of the 
river. 

On she went, shooting right and left, through 
the Northern fleet, and she actually escaped because 
she had not been expected and because only one of 
the E^orthern vessels had steam up. Farragut was 
greatly cast down over this, and that very night 
took his ships down the river past Yicksburg in order 
to destroy the Arkansas. The Arkansas had been 
moored in a sheltered place, and Farragut failed to 
destroy her, although his vessels shot at her as they 
passed down. Farragut had five men killed and six- 
teen wounded in this second passage of Yicksburg, 
while Davis, who remained above the city, had thir- 



68 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

teen killed and thirty-four wounded in the action with 
the batteries. 

His ships needing repairs and his coal supply be- 
ing short, Farragut went back to New Orleans and 
took charge of affairs on the lower Mississippi and on 
the Gulf. On October 1, 1862, the command of the 
squadron on the upper Mississippi, which up to this 
time, by a curious arrangement, had been part of the 
army, was transferred to the navy, and Commander 
David D. Porter, Farragut's old friend, was placed in 
charge. Farragut spent the winter in operations along 
the Gulf, and Porter remained up the Mississippi to 
help Grant capture Vicksburg and finally to open the 
river. Corpus Christi and Galveston were captured 
through Farragut's efforts, but Galveston had been re- 
taken by the Southern forces. It will be seen, there- 
fore, that Farragut had not only received a check when 
he ran by the batteries on Vicksburg the previous 
July, in pursuit of the Arkansas, but that he had not 
been entirely successful during the winter in his other 
operations. 

Early in March, 1863, Farragut came up the 
river again to look after affairs. The South had 
strongly fortified Port Hudson by this time, and here 
Farragut fought another sharp battle. He decided to 
run by the batteries, as he had done at Vicksburg. He 
arranged six of his vessels in pairs, leaving one, the 
Mississippi, to follow along by herself. The batteries 



UP THE MISSISSIPPI— FARRAGUT APPEARS. 69 

at Port Hudson were very strong, and fully one hun- 
dred feet above the river. The channel was crooked, 
and it was therefore very difficult to pass the place. 
Lashed to Farragut's flagship, the Hartford, was the 
small boat Albatross. Six mortar schooners having 
begun the fight at eleven o'clock at night, Farragut 
started up the river. A thick bank of smoke covered 
the stream, and Farragut had little difficulty in get- 
ting by the batteries. His ship ran aground at the 
bend just above the earthworks, but he got free and 
had only one man killed. Following him were the 
Richmond and Genesee lashed together. They were 
about past the last battery when a shot entered the 
engine room of the Richmond and blew open a safety 
valve. So much steam escaped that the Richmond 
and the Genesee couldn't get up the river and had to 
drift past the batteries again. The Monongahela and 
Kineo were third in line. A shot broke the Kineo's 
rudder and the Monongahela ran aground. The 
Monongahela finally got off, but her engine broke 
down, and these two ships drifted below out of action. 
The Mississippi then came along all by herself. She, 
too, ran aground at the bend opposite the last battery. 
She had no vessel to help pull her off, and she re- 
mained hard and fast for thirty-five minutes under a 
terrible fire. Her captain ordered her guns to be 
spiked and thrown into the river; the sick and 
wounded were lowered into boats, and the ship was 



70 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

set on fire and abandoned. It was a sad end for a 
famous vessel. The Mississippi had been the flag- 
ship of Perry when he opened Japan to civilization 
a few years before. In this fight at Port Hudson 
Farragut lost one hundred and fourteen killed and 
wounded. 

Although Farragut had succeeded in passing the 
batteries at Port Hudson, this was another check, for 
really only two of his vessels had succeeded in getting 
up the river. With his two vessels and one that had 
come down the river from Porter's squadron, he did 
some fighting between Port Hudson and Vicksburg, 
but it was of little importance. In the latter part of 
April Porter came down the river, running by the 
batteries at Vicksburg and Grand Gulf, as will be 
told in the next chapter, and on May 2, 1863, Far- 
ragut gave him command of the Mississippi from 
Port Hudson north. Farragut then joined his fleet 
below Port Hudson, going overland to reach his ves- 
sels. Port Hudson and Grand Ciulf and Vicksburg 
were still in possession of the South, and practic- 
ally all that Farragut had accomplished in his bril- 
liant campaign on the lower Mississippi, lasting for 
nearly a year, was to open the river as far as Port 
Hudson. He had captured ^^Tew Orleans, and his 
victory over the forts below it had been com- 
plete, because they had surrendered a few days 
after ^ew Orleans fell. The other contests might 



UP THE MISSISSIPPI— FARRAGUT APPEARS. 71 

be called drawn battles, but Farragiit in going by 
the batteries really won a victory in each case, be- 
cause he made it possible for Porter, in 1863, to 
finish up the work that he began and conducted so 
fearlessly. 




Attack oix Grand Gulf. 



CHAPTER V. 

DOWN THE MISSISSIPPI HELPIiSG THE ARMY. 

Soon after the civil war began it was seen that 
the Xorth would have to construct a fleet of river 
war ships for use on the Mississippi and its many 
branches, if it expected to defeat the South. Such a 
fleet would prevent the South from invading the 
I^orth, and would assist the army of the Xorth in in- 
vading the South. It would also keep the Southern 
rivers open to a great extent, so that the South could 
not get supplies for its army from the western side 
of the Mississippi River. Those river Avar ships had 
to-be of a kind never seen before. They had to be 
shallow and flat, so as to move on the rivers when the 
waters were low. They had to carry guns as large as 
the guns that ocean-going war ships carried. They 
had to be protected with a crude kind of armor, be- 
cause the fighting they had to do was to be at short 
range. 

For these reasons the river war ships were curious- 
looking things. They Avere generally rectangular in 

sliape, the hull being low in the water. From the 
72 



DOWN THE MISSISSIPPI-HELPING THE ARMY. 73 

four sides a thick sloping structure was raised, look- 
ing something like the sides of a roof. The wheels 
of these boats were at the rear and covered over by 
the roof. Most of the boats had iron plating, from 
one to three inches thick, around their sloping sides, 
which were backed with oak from two to three feet 
in thickness. The boilers and engines were generally 
put as far down in the hold of the vessels as pos- 
sible. In the sloping sides there were cut windows 
or portholes through which the guns fired their 
shells. 

For more than a year the river war ships were un- 
der the control of the army instead of the navy. It 
was a queer way of doing things, but seemed best at 
the time. Commander John Eodgers reported, by 
orders from Washington, for duty to General John 
C. Fremont in the West, and began to create the river 
fleet by buying, at Cincinnati, three small boats, 
which were changed into war sliips. On August 7, 
1861, a contract was signed with James B. Eads, the 
engineer afterward famous, to build seven river war 
ships in sixty-five days. It has been said that when 
the contract was signed the birds were flying in the 
trees of which these ships were made. Fads also fixed 
over a river snagboat — a snagboat was a vessel used 
to catch the floating limbs of trees that came down 
the river— and by September, 1861, the ^vTorth had 
quite a little fleet assembled at Cairo, 111., for 



74 



OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 



service up and down the Mississippi, Ohio, and their 
branches. 

Captain A. H. Foote was appointed to command 



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MISSOURI 



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the flotilla. He arrived on September 6, 1861, and 
four days later came the first fight in which these 



DOWN THE MISSISSIPPI— HELPING THE ARMY. 75 

river boats were engaged. It took place at Nor- 
folk, Mo., eight miles below Cairo, wliere General 
Grant had gone to drive out a Southern force. Two 
of Foote's ships shelled the Southern artillery and 
cavalry, and made them flee. The next fight in 
which they took part was at Belmont, Mo., opposite 
Columbus, Ky. Grant had gone to Belmont with 
four thousand soldiers, but the South had seven thou- 
sand men there before the battle ended, help hav- 
ing arrived from Kentucky, and Grant was forced 
to retreat. The gunboats shelled the Southern troops 
and drove them off while Grant's forces were be- 
ing taken on some transports. Had it not been for 
the two Northern vessels, Tyler and Lexington, 
which supported him. Grant would probably have 
been beaten badly, and might have been captured. 

It was not until February, 1862, that what might 
be called the first real fight of the river flotilla 
occurred. Up the Tennessee River, just south of 
the Kentucky line, the South had erected Fort 
Henry. Twelve miles across the country, on the 
Cumberland River, it had erected Fort Donelson. 
On February 2d Foote started up the Tennessee 
River with seven war ships, escorting the transports 
carrying Grant's troops. Foote had four ironclads — 
the St. Louis, which was the first ironclad the United 
States had, the Essex, Carondelet, and Cincinnati — 
and three small gunboats — the Conestoga, Tyler, 



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DOWN THE MISSISSIPPI— HELPING THE ARMY. 77 

and Lexington. The troops were landed at Paducali, 
below Fort Henry. On the next day a flood came 
down the river and swept away some torpedoes that 
had been placed there to blow up the Northern boats. 
The time for the advance came on February 6th. 
Foote told the captains of his boats that every shot they 
fired cost the Government eight dollars, and therefore ^ 
they must be careful not to waste Government prop- 
erty. Each of the four large boats could fire only three 
guns from its bow, twelve guns in all, while the fort 
could fire twenty guns. The large boats ranged them- 
selves in a line across the river, and the Cincinnati 
fired three shells so as to measure the distance to the 
fort. 

" There goes twenty-four dollars wasted,'' said a 
man who had heard Foote tell his captains to be care- 
ful about the use of powder and shot. 

The little boats lay down the river behind the 
ironclads. The fight lasted about fifty minutes. It 
was furious from the start. A shot from the fort 
struck the Essex and pierced the boiler. At once the 
ship was filled with scalding steam. Twenty-nine 
men were scalded terribly, and nearly one half of 
them died. Most of the other war ships were struck 
many times, but only two men were killed and nine 
wounded on these vessels. As the Essex was drift- 
ing out of action, one of her seamen, who had been 
scalded and was dying, heard some one say that the 



78 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

fort had surrendered. He leaped to his feet and ex- 
claimed : 

" Surrender ! I must see that with my own eyes 
before I die." 

Then the poor fellow rushed on deck and sank to 
his knees shouting " Glory to God! " He died in a 
few hours. 

General Tilghman, who commanded Fort Henry, 
surrendered, but more than twenty-five hundred of 
his men escaped across the country to Fort Donelson. 
Grant and his forces did not arrive until after the sur- 
render, and so it was a naval victory entirely. Some 
of the smaller boats of Foote's flotilla then went up 
the Tennessee and destroyed some Southern steamers 
and other property. 

Grant's next move was against Fort Donelson. 
This was a very strong earthwork. Foote and Ids 
fleet went around hj the Ohio and came up the Cum- 
berland to help Grant. The Carondelet, under com- 
mand of Captain Walke, one of the bravest naval 
officers in the war, arrived on February 12th below 
Fort Donelson, and on that day and the next shelled 
the earthworks while Grant was coming up on land. 
Foote arrived on February 13th, with the St. Louis, 
Louisville, and Pittsburg, and the next afternoon 
the ships advanced to attack the fort. They went 
up to within four hundrcnl yards. A shot struck the 
pilot house of the St. Louis, and the flying splinters 



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80 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

wounded Foote in the arm and foot. Another shot 
cut the tiller ropes of the J.ouisviLk'j and soon the St. 
Louis and Louisville drifted out of action. The Pitts- 
burg and Carondolet were also so badly damaged that 
they had to retire. It was a naval defeat. Fifty-four 
men had been killed or wounded, and three out of the 
four pilots on the ironclads were wounded mortally. 
Grant captured the fort on February 16th, and the 
fall of Fort Donelson was an army victory. 

The Ohio and the rivers flowing into it from the 
south were now in control of the Xorth, and the 
time had come for an advance down the Mississippi. 
Directly opposite the dividing line between Kentucky 
and Tennessee, and in a bend of the river, was an 
island called Lsland Xo. 10. The Southern forces had 
fallen back as far as this and had fortified it. A bar- 
rier of sunken vessels stretched from the island to the 
shore on the north side of the bend. On tlie south 
side of the island were four l)atteries witli twenty- 
three guns, and on the Tennessee shore were six l)at- 
teries with thirty-two guns. Foote and his fleet 
arrived above the island early in ]\rarch, 1862. Gen- 
eral Pope, of the Xorthern army, had cut off the re- 
treat of the Southern forces below Island Xo. 10, ex- 
cept in one place, and he wanted to have troops sent 
down the river to aid him in shutting off tlie retreat 
completely. A canal was dun- aeross the swamps above 
the island to cut off the bend in the river, so that the 



DOWN THE MISSISSIPPI— HELPING THE ARMY. 81 

transports might be taken through that way, but the 
plan was not successfuL 

Foote held back for a long time, but finally, after 



"Sew Madrid 



Point- 
Pleasant 




Island No. 10 and Batteries. 

the guns in the battery on the Tennessee shore had 
been spiked and put out of order by some of the 
ISTorthern sailors who had stolen down there in small 
boats in the night, and after the floating battery had 
been cut loose from its moorings, he told Walke, 
commanding the Carondelet, to go ahead. AValke 



82 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

put extra planks on the deck of his ship, ran chains 
along its sides, placed eighteen-inch ropes abont 
.the pilot house, and also used bales of hay for 
further protection against the shells of the Southern 
batteries. He started on the night of April 10th, 
in a violent thunderstorm. It was as black as ink 
on the river. The lightning flashes helped to show 
the way. Walke had placed the exhaust steam pipe 
in the wheelhouse instead of in the smokestack, as 
was the custom, so that the noise from the exhaust 
should not attract attention. The soot in the smoke- 
stack became dry and hot as a result, and when the 
Carondolet was opposite the first battery on the island 
the soot took fire and blazed up and became a flaming 
torch. It made the boat a splendid target for the 
Southern gunners. The cannon roared. The flashes 
of the guns mingled with the flashes of lightning. 
The booming of the guns was added to the peals of 
thunder. Walke did not reply to the shots, and final- 
ly slipped past the island in safety. At one time 
during the journey a flash of lightning showed to the 
pilot and the leadsman, the only two men who stood 
out in the open, that the ship was about to run ashore. 
Had it not been for this lightning flash, the Caron- 
delet would have been aground in a few seconds, 
directly under the guns of a battery. Island 'No. 10 
surrendered in a few days with five thousand men. 
The next fortification on the Mississippi was at 



84 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

Fort Pillow, halfway between Island Xo. 10 and 
Memphis, but before an attack was made on it two 
of the small vessels of Foote's flotilla, the Tyler and 
the Lexington, went up the Tennessee lliver far be- 
yond Fort Henry to Pittsburg Landing, where they 
helped Grant out of a tight place on April 6th. 
Grant was outnumbered, and his troops were being 
swei^t back in confusion from their base on the river. 
The advancing Southern forces had to go through a 
ravine, and the Tyler and Lexington hurled their 
shells into this ravine furiously and checked the 
Southern soldiers. Hundreds of men were killed. 
The two boats kept throwing shells into the camp of 
the Southern men all night long. The battle was re- 
newed the next day, and the Southern troops retreated. 
It was on April 14, 18G2, that Foote's flotilla an- 
chored six miles above Fort Pillow. Every day Foote 
sent a mortar boat down the river, with a war ship to 
guard it, to shell Fort Pillow. On May 9th Foote's 
wound had become so serious that he had to give up his 
command, and Captain Charles H. Davis took his place. 
The next day the Cincinnati went down the river 
with mortar boat Xo. 16 for the usual bombardment. 
Early in the year the Southern leaders had con- 
structed what they called a river defense fleet, con- 
sisting of fourteen small boats plated in front with 
iron. Their boilers and machinery were protected by 
ootton bales. There were eight of these small vessels 



DOWN THE MISSISSIPPI-HELPING THE ARMY. 85 

below Fort Pillow on the morning of INEay lOtli, when 
the Cincinnati went down with tin; mortar boat. 
Little attention had been paid to these Southern boats, 
because they had never attacked the Northern vessels. 
No sooner had the mortar boat fired its first shell into 
Fort Pillow than the Southern boats were seen com- 
ing up the river. The Cincinnati ran out into mid- 
stream to meet them all alone. The Southern vessel 
General Bragg ran up close along the Arkansas shore, 
turned, and ran her bow into the Cincinnati. The 
Cincinnati threw a broadside into the Bragg, and she 
drifted out of action. Two other Southern boats, the 
Price and Sumter, also ran into the Cincinnati, and 
by that time the vessels of the Northern fleet, three 
miles away, came hurrying to the scene. The Cin- 
cinnati was so l)adly damaged that she ran into shoal 
water and sank. The Carondelet put the Southern 
vessel Price out of action, and the Northern vessel 
Mound City sent the Southern vessel Van Dorn hur- 
rying out of the fight. The Mound City was so badly 
damaged in collision with the Van Dorn that she had 
to be run ashore to save her. There were five more 
Southern vessels in fighting condition against three 
Northern vessels at this time, Init the Southern vessels 
withdrew down the river just when they had a chance 
to gain a victory. 

The Northern fleet was strengthened soon after 
this by seven river steamers which had been made 



g6 OVR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

into rams on the Ohio River. The ^Northern army 
had made such advances that the Southern forces 
left Fort Pillow, and another step was then taken in 
opening the Mississippi from the north. The Southern 
vessels had retired to Memphis, and on June 5, 1862, 
the ^N'orthern fleet anchored above the city. The 
people of the city thronged the water front the next 
morning to see tke fight between the Northern and 
Southern fleets. It was to be a rare show for them. 
While the two lines of vessels were shooting at each 
other, two of the Northern rams, which had just 
joined the fleet, the Queen of the West and the Mon- 
arch, dashed through the smoke and into the line of 
the Southern ships. Colonel Ellet, in command of the 
Queen of the West, struck the Southern vessel Lovell 
and sank her. The Southern ram Beauregard struck 
the Queen of the West, and that vessel had to be run 
ashore to save her. The Southern rams Price and 
Beauregard then tried to strike the Northern ram 
Monarch, ])ut she slipped away from them and they 
ran into each other. The Price had to go to shore to 
keep from sinking. The Monarch turned and struck 
the Beanregard, just as a shot from the Northern ves- 
sel Benton pierced the Beauregard's boiler. The 
Southern vessel surrendered at once, and sank while 
she was being towed ashore, many of her scalded 
crew being drowned. A shot so injured the Southern 
vessel Little Rebel that she also had to run to shore. 



DOWN THE MISSISSIPPI— HELPING THE ARMY. 87 

Another shot sunk the Southern ship Thomson also, 
and the Southern boats Bragg and Sumter then sur- 
rendered. The Van Dorn was the only one of the 
Southern ships that escaped. The Northern vessels 
had only four men wounded. The loss on the South- 
ern vessels was never known. 

It was the first naval battle in which the ram was 
used extensively, and it is worth noting that three 
vessels were practically destroyed by ramming within 
fifteen minutes after the fight began in earnest. With 
the victory at Memphis, the Mississippi River itself 
was open as far as Yicksburg from the north. On 
July 1, 1862, Flag:Ofiicer Davis with his river war 
ships arrived above Vicksburg, and there met Farra- 
gut, who had come up the river with his fleet. But 
the river was by no means open to the sea. In a few 
days Farragut was to run down the river again, in 
pursuit of the ram Arkansas, while the Southern 
forces were to continue the work of building forts 
along the stream, and the task of opening the river 
finally occupied more than a year. 

Many trips were made up the various rivers that 
flow into the Mississippi between Memphis and 'New 
Orleans about this time, which called for great brav- 
ery from the Northern sailors, and some of which 
were not entirely successful. One of these trips was 
up the White River, in Arknusas, where at Charles 
City an attack was made on Southern earthworks. 



88 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

Three of tlie river fleet, with a transport carrying an 
Indiana regiment, appeared there on June 20th, two 
days before Davis reached Vicksburg. A shell from 
the earthworks entered the boiler of the Mound City, 
the leading boat of the expedition, and only three 
officers and twenty-two men of the one hundred and 
seventy-five on board escaped unhurt. More than 
forty men were drowned or shot when they jumped 
into the water, and thirty-two died of their wounds 
or the scalds from the steam. The regiment, however, 
which had been landed, carried the earthworks by 
storm, and the gunboats that were uninjured went 
sixty-three miles farther up the river and opened it. 
Davis was then made a rear admiral. 

Early in January, 1863, a force was sent up the 
Arkansas River to capture a fort called Arkansas Post. 
Nearly five thousand troops were taken along, but be- 
fore they were landed the vessels of the expedition, 
on January 9 th and 10th, shot the earthworks to 
pieces and they surrendered. 

General Grant had arrived opposite Vicksburg on 
January 30, 1863, and he and Porter formed a plan 
to get control of the Mississippi between Vicksburg 
and Port Hudson, which had by this time been well 
fortified. Porter sent Colonel Charles P. Ellet with 
the ram Queen of the West down past Vicksburg on 
the morning of February 2d. On the way down, and 
under a heavy fire, Ellet stopped and rammed the 



TURNING OPERATION 

TICKSBUIIG CAMPAIGX 
1863 




90 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

steamer Yicksburg, which was moored to the bank 
directly under the forts, and then passed on without 
losing a man. A few days later Porter then sent the 
Northern vessel Indianola down. Ellet about this 
time took the Queen of the West up the Eed River, 
and had to abandon his vessel while attacking a fort 
near Gordon's Landing. He escaped in a prize he had 
captured. The Southerners fixed up the Queen of the 
West, Avhich had been abandoned because a shot had 
burst its steam pipe, and with two or three of their 
rams went after the Indianola, which was trying to 
escape up the Mississippi to Porter's fleet. A fight oc- 
curred between the Indianola on one side and the 
Queen of the West and the Webb on the other, and 
the Indianola was run ashore to keep her from sink- 
ing. 

The Southern forces took possession of the In- 
dianola and were repairing lier when Porter played an 
amusing trick on them. He took a coal barge and 
placed some pork barrels on her to resemble smoke- 
stacks, built a fire in the barge, and sent her drif ting- 
down the river. She looked like a terrible monster. 
The Southern workmen on the Indianola thought that 
they and the Indianola were about to be wiped out 
of existence. The Southern ofiicer in charge of the 
ram set the two big guns of that vessel muzzle to 
muzzle and fired them, and two days later, while the 
dummy war ship was fast aground, they blew up 



DOWN THE MISSISSIPPI— HELPING THE ARMY. 91 

the Indianola in their fright, destroying her com- 
pletely. 

Late in February, 1863, Porter tried to get con- 
trol of that country east of the Mississippi through 
which the Yazoo River flows from north to south, and 
which was filled with many small branching streams. 
He really tried to send some of his war ships overland 
in this task. He had the levee in the Mississippi Eiver 
cut a few miles below Helena, Ark., on the Mississippi 
side, and let the water flow across country into Moon 
Lake, from which he ordered part of his ships 
to go by the Coldwater and Tallahatchie Rivers 
to capture Fort Pemberton above the town of 
Yazoo. It was nearly a month after the levee 
was cut before the ten war ships and six thousand 
troops who w^ent with them were fairly started. For 
four days they struggled against overhanging trees, 
driftwood, and the great number of trees which the 
Southern troops felled across the streams. Some of the 
vessels lost their smokestacks, one of them lost her 
wheel, and all were damaged by striking the roots in 
the water and the trees overhead. After a week's 
hard work the boats reached Fort Pemberton, but they 
were obliged to retreat, having lost between twenty 
and thirty men killed and wounded. The journey back 
to the Mississippi was even more diflicult than that 
to Fort Pemberton, but finally, on March 18th, the 
vessels got back. It was at this time, on March 14^ 



92 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

1863, that Farragut had run past the works at Port 
Hudson on his second trip up the river. 

Two days later, on March 16th, Porter thought 
that he would try an overland trip himself into the 
Yazoo country with his vessels, so as to reach Yazoo 
from the south. With thirteen vessels he entered 
the swampy country through a bayou, and foot by 
foot tried to force his way through the shallow water 
and among the thick growth of trees. He actually had 
to dig a channel through the swamps for his boats, 
and cut a pathway above the water through the trees 
by which he could pass. The Southern forces cut down 
trees in front of him and behind him, and kept shoot- 
ing at him in small parties, and he was four days in 
going a few miles. Then he tried to back out. This 
was even harder work than trying to go ahead, and 
he would probal)ly have lost all his vessels had not 
General Sherman, who was in that region with his 
forces, come to his rescue, driving the Southern land 
forces away. 

Porter returned to his station above Vicksburg, 
and immediately l)egan to prepare to run by the bat- 
teries there, following Farragut's example, so that he 
might work with General Grant, who was below 
Vicksburg trying to capture tlie city. He lashed 
coal barges to his vessels, aiul inidor n furious fire ran 
by the forts in safety on the night of April 16, 1863. 
The vessels were struck by about one in ten of the five 



DOWN THE MISSISSIPPI— HELPING THE ARMY. 93 

hundred shots that were fired at them, but there was 
no loss of life. A week later the army transports ran 
down the river and most of Porter's vessels by this 
time were below Yicksburg. A short distance below 
Vicksburg the Southerners had fortified Grand Gulf. 
The forts were at a bend in the river and were on 
bluffs seventy-five feet high. It was necessary to cap- 
ture this place before Grant could take Vicksburg. 
It had become one of the strongest positions of the 
South on the river. On April 29th Porter attacked 
the forts. The battle lasted five and one half hours, 
and Porter retired with a loss of eighteen killed and 
fifty-six wounded. 

Being unable to destroy the forts, Porter tried 
Farragut's tactics again, and on that night ran by the 
place, losing only one man. Grant and Porter now 
worked together, and on May 3d Grand Gulf was 
given up by the Southern forces. Grant and Porter at 
once advanced toward Yicksburg, and began a series 
of attacks on the place, which finally fell on July 4th. 
Five days later Port Hudson fell, and then the Missis- 
sippi was really open from the Ohio to the Gulf, after 
a campaign that had lasted more than a year. 

There was more or less fighting for a year and a 
half afterward up the various streams that flow into 
the Mississippi, especially on the west side, but ex- 
cept in one case they were small contests. The one 
exception was what is kno^vn as the Red River ex- 



94 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

pedition. The French had taken the city of Mexico, 
and were trying to get Texas to secede from the South. 
The North decided to send General Banks up the Red 
River, and in March, 1864, Porter, with his fleets and 
the transjDorts carrying the army, started to take pos- 
session of the country in and around Shreveport, near 
the boundary between Texas and Louisiana. The 
expedition reached Alexandria on March 15th, and 
established a garrison. Passing on, there was some 
sharp fighting, but the Southern forces were repulsed 
along the banks, and the boats finally came to a place 
where there were two rapids. The water was very 
low, but after much hard work ten of the gunboats 
and thirty of the transports passed up the river. On 
account of the dry season the river fell rapidly, and 
in a few days it was seen that it would be impos- 
sible to go up the stream very much farther. There 
was so very little water above the rapids by this time 
that the boats could not come down again, and it 
seemed as if the entire force was caught in a very 
bad trap. 

There was one man on the expedition, however, 
who solved the problem of rescuing the boats. He 
was Lieutenant-Colonel Joseph Bailey, of a Wiscon- 
sin regiment. He had been a lumberman, and knew 
how to get large rafts over shallow places in streams. 
He took two thousand Maine soldiers who knew some- 
thing about lumbering, and built dams across the 



DOWN THE MISSISSIPPI— HELPING THE ARMY. 95 

river, using branches of trees and logs, wliicli lie 
placed in cribs. He left an opening one hundred and 
fifty feet wide in the middle of the river, w^hich at 
the place of these rapids was seven hundred and fifty 
feet across. He intended, to sink some coal barges in 
the opening. The water had backed up to a depth 
of more than six feet in the eight days he had been at 
work, and just as the coal barges were being sunk 
the pressure swept them away. The gunboat Lex- 
ington was only a short distance above the opening in 
the dam through which the water was now sweeping 
in a great flood, and Admiral Porter shouted to the 
captain of the vessel to go through. The Lexington 
started at once; a great hush fell upon the thousands 
of soldiers upon the banks, but after much tossing and 
swaying the vessel passed through in safety. Cheer 
after cheer greeted the boat and her crew. Three of 
tlie other vessels followed the Lexington. Bailey 
built two small dams al)0ve the rapids and finally suc- 
ceeded in raising the water over the rapids five feet, 
and all the flotilla passed down out of the trap. This 
practically ended the warfare on a large scale on the 
Mississippi and its branches. 



CHAPTEE YI. 

THE GEEAT FIGHT AT MOBILE. 

After Farragut had left the Mississippi, his 
chief work was to get control of the various harbors in 
the Gnlf of Mexico, still in possession of the South. 
He made a short visit to the North, also, for a rest. 
On October 15, 1862, having returned to his work, 
he reported to Washington that Galveston, Corpus 
Christi, and Sabine Pass had been occupied by his 
forces without bloodshed. At the end of November 
he wrote: 

" We shall spoil unless we have a fight occasion- 
ally." 

The fight did come very soon, and it resulted in a 
victory for the South. Two small river steamers, 
assisted by a land force, attacked four steamers of the 
North and a garrison of Northern soldiers at Galves- 
ton, early on the morning of January 1, 1863. The 
garrison was captured, and one of the Northern ves- 
sels, the Westfield, was blown up by her officers, and 
another, the Harriet Lane, was surrendered after her 
captain and executive officers had been killed. A 



Belle Fontaine 





Blakely 



a Fort Powell > |^ ^ 




MAP OF 

MOBILE BAY 



Line ghoifing 22 ft. of Water ■ 
13.. .. .. - 



^Fort\\ {}'>? .'-' 
"Gaines'',- I ^^ 

Fort MoVgran^-'^^^^'^^ 



^ L F -Jl^ 




^oH Secours Ba 




M 



i / a O 



98 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

short time afterward Sabine Pass was also captured 
from the Korth. The Northern forces along the 
coast of Texas had been checked. Farragut then at 
once decided to strike the South its hardest blow in 
the waters of the Gulf. That task was to capture 
Mobile. It resulted in a victory for him. It was one 
of the greatest naval battles ever fought, ^o naval 
commander in history up to that time had ever had so 
powerful a fleet under him. It is upon the battle of 
Mobile Bay and his work in the Mississippi below 
Xew Orleans that the great fame of Farragut rests. 

Mobile is at the head of a great pear-shaped and 
shallow bay. The entrance to the bay is thirty miles 
below the city. The channel at the entrance is two 
thousand feet wide. The distance from one point of 
land to the other at the entrance is about three miles. 
The channel runs close to the eastern side of the en- 
trance, and there the South had a very strong fort and 
earthworks, called Fort Morgan. On the western 
entrance to the harbor was Fort Gaines, on Dauphin 
Island, and not far from it was a small fort called 
Fort Powell, on Tower Island. Fort Morgan was 
five-sided, and had forty guns in its main battery. It 
was also fortified with sand bags, and it was one of the 
strongest forts that the Xorthern vessels had to attack 
in the entire war. The other forts at the entrance to 
the harbor played only a small part in this fighting. 

The South had long expected an attack on Mobile, 



100 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

and it began to build, late in 1863, another of the 
rams like the Merrimae. She was called the Ten- 
nessee. She was the strongest of the vessels of this 
kind, and did more fighting than any of them. She 
was two hundred and nine feet long, forty-eight feet 
wide, and drew fourteen feet of water. On the 
hull was built a structure with sloping sides. This 
was seventy-nine feet long and twenty-nine feet 
wide. It was called a casemate. The sides of 
this structure were made of twenty-five inches of 
wood, on which were placed iron armor plates six 
inches thick at the bow and five inches thick else- 
where. The hull of the vessel was armored for six 
feet under water, and a ridge or a knuckle stuck out 
from the vessel two feet under the water around its 
four sides. She carried six rifled guns. One fired from 
the bow and another from the stern, and there were 
two on each side. The shutters over the portholes 
for the guns were of iron five inches thick. She was 
a very strong vessel, but she had two great faults. 
One was that the chains which controlled the rudder 
were on the outside of the boat where they could be 
shot away, and the other was the poor engine that 
was in the boat. The highest speed the Tennessee 
could make was six knots an hour. 

This vessel was finished in May, 1864, and had 
to be fairly lifted over a mud bank on the way from 
the river where she was built to the bay, a short dis- 



THE GREAT FIGHT AT MOBILE. 101 

tance below. In addition to the Tennessee the Sonth 
had three small gunboats in Mobile Bay. They were 
the Morgan, Gaines, and Selma. Farragut had ar- 
rived finally in front of Mobile on January 18, 1864. 
He had to wait six months before he had secured all 
the vessels that he wanted and before the army was 
ready to assist him in the work around Mobile. On 
the night of May 18th the Tennessee had come down 
the harbor to attack his fleet, but she ran on a mud 
bank, and when she got off was towed near Fort Mor- 
gan, where she waited for Farragut to make the 
attack. 

The South took other measures to keep Farragut 
out of the bay. Three rows of torpedoes were planted 
across the channel. Forty-six of the torpedoes were 
made of beer kegs, and one hundred and thirty-four 
were made of tin. These torpedoes were supposed to 
explode when any vessel struck them. An open 
space, only one hundred yards wide and less than 
three hundred yards from the water battery at Fort 
Morgan, was left open for blockade runners and other 
friendly vessels to reach Mobile, and through this nar- 
row space, directly under the guns of the large fort, 
Farragut had to pass. Some of the officers of the fleet 
had secured one of the torpedoes and had brought it 
to Farragut. He had disliked the use of torpedoes in 
war. The one that was brought him was placed on 
his cabin table and rolled off. It exploded as it struck 



102 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

the floor, hill <li(l no dainago. Kan'agut jumped up 
and said to the otheer who brought it in: 

" Young man, don't send any more of those in- 
fernal machines to me; I thought I was shot." 

Late in July four monitors, for which Farragut 
had been waiting, arrived, and he at once decided to 
prepare for his attack. He ordered all the wooden ves- 
sels of his fleet to be protected with chains and bags of 
sand so far as possible. All the small boats were 
lowered on the side away from Fort Morgan, and nets 
Avere stretched to keep splinters from flying. Alto- 
gether Farragut had twenty-seven vessels. He placed 
his four monitors in the first division of the fleet. 
The second division consisted of fourteen wooden ves- 
sels. The remaining vessels of the fleet were left in a 
squadron by themselves outside the bay to bombard 
Fort Morgan, and did not attempt to enter with Farra- 
gut. Farragut wanted to place his flagship, the Hart- 
ford, immediately behind the line of monitors, but 
his officers persuaded him to allow the Brooklj'u to 
take that position, because she had an attachment to 
the bow with which to catch the torpedoes. Farragut 
consented at last and went second in the division. 
Each of the large wooden vessels had a smaller one 
lashed to the side away from Fort Morgan, for pro- 
tection to the smaller vessel and also to assist the larger 
vessel in case of accident to machinery. 

On August 4th Farragut decided to make the 



THE GREAT FIGHT AT MOBILE. 103 

start early the next morning if the weather condi- 
tions were favorable. He wanted a southwest wind, 
so that the smoke would be blown from his ships 
against Fort Morgan. Before he went to bed on the 
night of August 4th he wrote to his wife: 

" I am going into Mobile in the morning, if God 

is mv leader, as I hope he is, and in him I place my 
trust. If he thinks it is the place for me to die, I 
am ready to submit to his will. God bless and pre- 
serve you if anything should ha^Dpen to me." ^ 

Farragut did not sleep well, and when the orderly | 
came in his room during the night he asked the direc- 
tion of the wind. The orderly said it was southwest, 
and Farragut replied: 

" Very well, then we will go in in the morning." 

At 5.30 A. M. he and Drayton, the captain of his 
ship, had finished their breakfast, and Farragut quiet- 
ly remarked : 

" Well, Drayton, we might as well get under 
way." 

Signals were hoisted immediately. The men in 
Fort Morgan and on the Southern ships saw them, 
and knew that the time had come for the great fight. 
The ram Tennessee was in command of Admiral 
Buchanan, who had (M^mmanded the Merrimac in the 
first day's fight of that vessel at Hampton Roads. 
Buchanan called his men together and said to them: 



THE GREAT FIGHT AT MOBILE. 105 

" ISTow, men, the enemy is coming, and I want you 
to do your duty. If I fall, lay me on one side and go 
on with the fight and never mind me, but whip and 
sink the Yankees or fight until you sink yourselves, 
but do not surrender." 

It was 6.47 o'clock when the first vessel of the 
Northern fleet, the monitor Tecumseh, fired at Fort 
Morgan. Slowly the Northern vessels approached the 
narrow opening off Fort Morgan, but it was not until 
7.07 o'clock that the fort fired its first shot in reply. 
It struck the Hartford and killed nearly all of the 
crew at a gun. Almost instantly every gun in the 
fleet that could be brought to bear upon the fort was 
in action. There was a terrific fire. By this time the 
Tecumseh had approached the opening in the channel. 
There was a bend in the channel, and Captain Craven, 
of the Tecumseh, saw that he could not turn his un- 
wieldy vessel if he went through the opening, which 
was marked by a buoy. The ram Tennessee had come 
out from behind Fort Morgan, and was headed for the 
Tecumseh. Craven paid little attention to the fort, 
and started to meet the ram. He said to his pilot: 

" It is impossible that the admiral means us to 
go inside the buoy; I can not turn my ship." 

Craven knew no fear and did not hesitate, but 
started straight for the Tennessee across the line of 
torpedoes. Had he gone in the channel and stuck 
fast the day would have been a failure, because the 



106 OUR ^^TAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

other ships could not have gone by. The rest of the 
fleet saw the Tecumseh going straight across the tor- 
pedo nest. For a time he seemed to be safe, and it 
was hoped that he might get through some opening, 
but suddenly there was a mighty roar and the bow of 
the Tecumseh was seen to be lifted in the air. Then 
it plunged into the water, and the stern of the vessel 
showed above the surface. The ship took a sharp 
dive and disappeared. Craven and his pilot John Col- 
lins started for the small opening in the deck from the 
pilot house. They reached there at the same time, 
and the brave man Craven showed how noble he was 
when he drew back and told the pilot to go first. 
There was only time for one of them to be saved and 
Craven said: 

" After you, pilot.'' 

Collins had scarcely reached the deck before the 
ship went down and Craven was drowned with ninety- 
two of his men. Some of the men on the other 
vessels of the fleet thought it was the Tennessee 
that had been sunk. They shouted that the Ten- 
nessee had gone dowm, and cheer after cheer went up 
from the Northern ships; but the cheers were soon 
silenced when word was passed that it was the Te- 
cumseh. Farragut at once ordered a boat cleared 
away to rescue some of the men in the water, but a 
boat had already been sent. General Richard L. 
Page, who was in command of Fort Morgan, splen- 



108 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

did man that lie was, saw the small boat and ordered 
his men not to fire upon it because it was engaged in 
saving drowning men. After the Tecumseh had gone 
down the other monitors passed over the place where 
it had sunk and went past the torpedoes. They were 
ready then to fight the Tennessee or to help the rest of 
the fleet. 

The Brooklyn now approached the narrow opening 
in the channel. Her captain saAV some floats that 
looked like torpedoes, and he at once stopped his en- 
gines and hesitated about going in. Farragut was 
close behind on the Hartford, and it seemed as if 
there would be a collision. The Richmond was 
close behind the Hartford, and Farragut feared that 
it too would come up and get into the tangle. In 
his desire to see all that was going on, Farragut had 
climbed far up into the shrouds, and Captain Dray- 
ton, fearing that if he were wounded or killed he 
would be lost by falling overboard, sent Signal-Quar- 
termaster Knowles up to lash Farragut to the shrouds. 
Farragut said to never mind him, but Knowles went 
ahead and tied him to the rigging. When the 
Brooklyn hesitated she swung round, and Farragut 
shouted to her captain: 

"What's the matter?'' 

" Torpedoes," was the answer. 

Farragut said not to mind the torpedoes, but to 
follow him, and then he showed what a great fighter 



THE GREAT FIGHT AT MOBILE. 109 

and sailor lie was. He took liis ship out of the line so 
as to avoid a collision Avith the Brooklyn, and headed 
straight for the torpedoes. Knowing the fate of the 
Tecumseh, every man on the fleet who saw Farragut 
making this dash expected to see his vessel blown to 
pieces. Fortunately the tin torpedoes across which 
Farragut drove his vessel had become rusted and the 
caps did not explode. The Hartford passed over the 
line in safety, and the Richmond, which had been 
following, avoided a collision with the Brooklyn by 
backing and then taking the path through which the 
Hartford had gone. The scene at this time was ter- 
rible. All the guns on ships and on shore were being 
fired as fast as possible, great clouds of smoke were 
drifting from the vessels to land, the noise was like a 
hundred thunderstorms put together, the men were 
stripped to their waists as they fought, and all the 
while oflicers Avere going among them saying, 
" Steady, boys, take your time." Men were being 
killed or wounded by the dozen, but no one faltered, 
from admiral to messenger boy. 

The monitors, which had passed the torpedoes 
safely, ran close to the fort to try to silence the guns 
which were making sad havoc on the Hartford and 
Brooklyn. Every shot from the fort seemed to result 
in the death of some of the brave men on the large 
ships. At last Fort ]\[organ was passed. It required 
about an hour to accomplish this task. The Tennessee 



110 <^>UR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

was still up the bay, its fearless commander waiting 
to fight the entire Northern fleet. The Southern 
gunboats had begun to annoy the Hartford, which 
was now in the lead, and Farragut ordered the little 
vessel Metacomet, which had been lashed to the Hart- 
ford, to cut loose and destroy the small Southern 
shii^s. The Metacomet soon disabled the Gaines and 
drove the Morgan under the protection of the fort. 
The Metacomet then pursued the Selma into shoal 
water. The bottom was very soft, however, and the 
Metacomet, under a heavy pressure of steam, pushed 
through it and overtook the Selma. A leadsman had 
been stationed on the deck of the Metacomet to test 
the depth of water, and he kept calling out that the 
w^ater was too shallow for the Metacomet to go far- 
ther. Lieutenant Jouett, who was in command of the 
Metacomet, was annoyed at this and he turned to one 
of his assistants and said : 

"Call that man in; he makes me nervous.'^ 
The Metacomet went on and made the Selma sur- 
render. The Selma was commanded by Captain P. 
U. Murphy, who in the former days of the United 
States navy had been a shipmate of Jouett, and as 
a superior officer had been very kind to him. Before 
the fight began Jouett said that he intended to cap- 
ture Murphy if he could. He remembered that 
Murphy was very fond of eating crabs, and he resolved 
to give Murphy a treat. So while the fighting was go- 



THE GREAT FIGHT AT MOBILE. m 

iug on, Joiiett bad his cook fixiiio' up a nice breakfast 
for Miirpliy. After the Sehua surrendered, Murphy 
camej^n board the Metacomet to surrender his sword. 
Jouett had seen him coming and had sent away most 
of the officers and men from the quarter-deck, so that 
very few should actually see Murphy surrender. He 
wanted to spare Murphy's feelings as much as pos- 
sible. As Murphy reached the deck he drew himself up 
to his full height, and with great dignity held out his 
sword and began to make a speech saying that he 
had yielded. Jouett swept the sword aside, took 
Murphy's hand cordially, put his arm around Mur- 
phy's shoulders, and said: 

" Why, Murphy, I am glad to see you. Come on; 
your breakfast has been waiting for you for some 
time." 

They went into the cabin and as Murphy saw 
the table already set for him, he turned to Jouett and 
said : 

" Why didn't you let me know that you had all 
this? I would have surrendered sooner." 

The Hartford was now sweeping up the bay, and 
the Tennessee tried to ram lu^r. The Hartford was 
quicker, and avoided the vessel and passed on, having 
given the ram a broadside. The Tennessee then 
fought each ^NTorthern vessel as it passed. The Mo- 
nongahela, of the ISTorthern fleet, was in collision with 
the Tennessee, but little damage resulted. The 



112 OUR NAVY m TIME OF WAR. 

Northern vessel which suffered most in passing the 
Tennessee was the Oneida. Her boiler was pierced 
by a shot, and the Galena, to which she had been 
lashed, was unable to escape the Tennessee. The 
Winnebago, one of the monitors, saw the plight of the 
Oneida, and Captain Stevens, of the Winnebago, who 
had given up the command of the Oneida so that his 
friend Commander Mullaney might take the Oneida, 
ran down with the AVinnebago and came between the 
Tennessee ,and the Oneida, saving the latter vessel 
from destruction. Stevens performed a remarkable 
part during all the fighting. He would not remain 
under cover, and kept w^alking back and forth in the 
open between the turrets of the Winnebago. When 
he saved the Oneida, the crew of that vessel gave him 
three rousing cheers. He stepped to the side of his 
boat, took off his hat and bowed, as if he was acknowl- 
edging a cheer in a parade. 

All the vessels had now passed the fort and the 
Tennessee, and they came to anchor four miles up the 
bay for a rest and to clean up the. ships, as well as to 
take care of the wounded and the dead. Farragut 
ordered most of the men to go to breakfast so as to 
prepare for the final struggle of the morning. Cap- 
tain Drayton said to him that all the work of the 
morning counted for nothing so long as the Tennessee 
was not destroyed. Farragut said he knew that, and 
that as soon as the men were through with breakfast 









..^^ 




114 OUR NAVY IN TIME OP WAR. 

he was going after the Tennessee. Suddenly a cry was 
heard : 

"The ram is coming! " 

Farragut watched the Tennessee intently. He 
thought she might go outside the bay after the small 
vessels he had left there. To his relief he saw her 
turn toward the fleet. 

" ISTo, Buck is coming here," he said. 

Then he gave orders for the Monongahela, the 
Lackawanna, and Ossipee to ram the Tennessee with 
him. The Monongahela struck the Tennessee on the 
starboard side and then swung off and gave her a 
broadside of shells. Then the Lackawanna struck her 
on the port side. The Hartford came swinging down, 
and it looked as if they would meet bow to bow. 
They sheered off, however, and a glancing blow re- 
sulted. At this time Midshipman John C. Watson 
lashed Farragut to the rigging once more. The 
Lackawanna, in trying to hit the Tennessee a second 
blow, struck the Hartford instead. This annoyed 
Farragut, and he told his signal officer to order the 
Lackawanna to keep out of the way. 

The Tennessee had been doing great damage with 
her guns to the wooden ships, but the three monitors, 
Chickasaw, Winnebago, and Manhattan, now came 
rushing to the attack. The Manhattan and Winne- 
bago were soon disabled, but the Chickasaw ran 
around to the stern of the Tennessee and finished her 



^ 



Ossipee 



Hartford 




Chickasaw 



Lacka^ 



^^inebec 



Diagram showing the different Points at ivhicTi 
the Tennessee was ramrned by Farragufs vessels. 



116 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

up. The shutter of the rear gun in the Tennessee 
had become jammed, her smokestack had been shot 
away, her deck house was full of smoke and gases, the 
heat was terrific, and a shot from the Chickasaw had 
carried away the chains to her rudder, so that with the 
damage that had been done to her by the ramming 
she was helpless. A sj)linter had been driven against 
Admiral Buchanan's leg and had broken in it. Most 
of the shutters to the portholes were now jammed, 
the vessel was leaking, and Captain Johnson, who had 
taken charge of her, could neither shoot his guns nor 
steer his ship. The Is^orthern vessels were pouncing 
upon the Tennessee like a pack of hounds on a dying 
fox at bay. For twenty minutes Johnson had been 
unable to shoot a gun, and lie went to Buchanan, who 
was under the surgeon's care, and said he thought they 
ought to surrender. 

" Very well," said Buchanan, '' if you can not do 
them any further injury, Johnson, you had better sur- 
render." 

Johnson went on deck and waved a white flag just 
as the Xorthern vessel Ossipee was coming down to 
ram the Tennessee. Commander Le Boy, of the 
Ossipee, saw the white flag too late to avoid a collision, 
but he turned his ship so that the result was not 
serious. Le Boy and Johnson had been old friends 
in the navy before the war, and when he saw Johnson, 
Le Boy shouted; 



THE GREAT FIGHT AT MOBILE. II7 

" Hello, Johnson, liow are you ? This is the 
United States steamer Ossipee. I'll send a boat 
alongside for you. I'm Le Roy; don't you know 
me?" 

A moment later Johnson was aboard the Ossipee, 
and the old friends were shaking hands most cordially. 

Thus the great fight at ^lobile ended. In a few 
days the forts at the entrance of the harbor surren- 
dered. There was some little fighting going on in and 
around the city of Mobile up to the next April, but 
that was a matter with which the army had to do 
largely. The place practically fell with Farragut's 
great victory, a victor}- upon which, with his other 
work, his fame rests secure for all time. 

In this terrific fight of August 5, 1804, the Hart- 
ford was struck twenty times; the Brooklyn, thirty; 
the Octorara, seventeen; the Metacomet, eleven; the 
Lackawanna, five; the Ossipee, four; the Mononga- 
hela, five; the Kennebec, two; and the Galena, seven. 
The monitor Manhattan was struck nine times; the 
Winnebago, nineteen; and the Chickasaw, three. 
The Tennessee was really damaged very little, but 
fifty-three shot marks were counted on her broken 
sides. 

The loss in the ^N'orthern fleet was: Hartford, 25 
killed and 28 wounded; Brooklyn, 11 killed and 43 
wounded; Lackawanna, 4 killed and 35 w^ounded; 
Oneida, 8 killed and 30 wounded; Monongahela, 6 



118 



OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 



wounded; Metacomet, 1 killed and 2 wounded; Ossi- 
pee, 1 killed and 7 wounded; Eichmond, 2 wounded; 
Galena, 1 wounded; Octorara, 1 killed and 10 
wounded; Kennebec, 1 killed and 6 wounded. Total, 
52 killed and 170 wounded, in addition to the 93 men 
who were drowned in the Tecumseh. On the South- 
ern side the Tennessee had 2 killed and 9 wounded; 
Gaines, 2 killed and 3 wounded; Selma, 8 killed and 
7 wounded; Morgan, 1 wounded. Total, 12 killed 
and 20 wounded. The ^N'orth took 280 men prisoners. 
Thus ended a bloody day, but one of the most 
glorious in naval history in the bravery shown on both 
sides. 




Sinkiiig^ (if ihii Stone fleet in the port of Charleston, S. C. 



CHAPTER VII. 

FAILURES OFF CHAKLESTON. 

From the time the war began, in 1861, until it 
ended, in 1865, the Xorth tried many times to cap- 
ture Charleston, S. C, from the sea. All these 
efforts failed, and it was not until General Sherman 
with his army appeared in the rear of the city, in 
1865, that it fell. The [N^orth, early in the war, sent a 
group of vessels to blockade the port of Charleston. 
On December 20, 1861, the North sunk twenty 
schooners loaded with stone in the various ship chan- 
nels to the port to keep vessels from going in or out. 
These twenty schooners were called the " stone fleet.'' 
The barrier had some effect, but the tide and the cur- 
rents soon opened new channels, and the watch by the 
E'orthern vessels off the bar had to be constant and 
active. 

After Admiral Dupont had won his great victory 

at Port Royal, and after the Monitor had shown how 

useful that type of vessel was, the ]N"orth decided to 

build, as quickly as possible, several more monitors, 

and to place them under the command of Admiral 

119 



FAILURES OFF CHARLESTON. 121 

l)ii])Oiit, witli t\w idea of capturing Charlestoii. It 
was in the port of Cliark'stoii tiiat the civil war actu- 
ally l)egau, and the South, as a matter of pride as well 
as of defense, meant to keep the Northern soldiers 
and sailors out of Charleston until the very last, and 
it succeeded. During the latter part of 1861 and 
during all of 1862 it fortified the harlxjr and made 
it very strong with earthworks, barriers in the chan- 
nels, torpedoes, and mines, in addition to the strong 
stone forts that were there when the Avar began. The 
main ship channel ran directly north from the ocean 
into the harbor and close to Morris Island on the west 
of that entrance. Having passed Morris Island, a 
ship entering the port would come in direct range 
of Fort Sumter on an island in the harbor, and also 
within range of several forts and earthworks on Sul- 
livan's Island which guarded the northern entrance 
to the port. All along the shore of Morris Island, to 
the south, were heavily armed earthworks, and almost 
every ])lace on Sullivan's Island that could serve the 
purpose was bristling with cannon behind the great 
heaps of dirt and sand. A long line of torpedoes 
reached from Fort Sumter to Sullivan's Island across 
the main channel, and along the many inlets from the 
sea, above and l)elow the main entrance to the port, 
were earthworks behind which were heavy cannon. 
Altogether no less than seventy large guns protected 
the port, in addition to the mines and torpedoes. 



122 OUR NAVY IN TIME OP WAR. 

I^or was this all the protection the South had 
made for the city and forts. Up one of the rivers 
near the city the South had built two more of the 
rams patterned after the Merrimac. They were called 
the Palmetto State and the Chicora, and were one 
hundred and fifty feet long, thirty-five feet wide, and 
drew twelve feet of water. They had two inches of 
iron over the twenty-two inches of pine and oak that 
made up their sloping sides, and they could steam 
about seven knots an hour. The Palmetto State had 
four large guns and the Chicora had six. 

The first action off the harbor took place early on 
the morning of January 31, 1863, when the two 
Southern rams stole down the channel in a thick fog, 
to try to destroy some of the ^Northern ships on the 
blockade. Several of the large war ships of the I^orth 
had been sent to Port Royal for repairs, and only 
three strong war ships and seven armed merchantmen 
were doing blockade duty. It was about 4.30 a. m. 
when the ofiicer of the deck on the Northern armed 
merchantman Mercedita saw a strange vessel coming 
straight for his own through the fog. The ofiicer at 
once shouted: 

" What steamer is that ? Drop your anchor or you 
will be into us." 

The reply startled the Northern ofiicer. It was 
Commodore D. N. Ingraham, in command of the Pal- 
metto State, who replied: 



FAILURES OFF CHAKLESTON. 123 

" The Confederate States steamer Palmetto 
State." 

No sooner had the answer to the Northern officer's 
question been given, than Ingraham fired a seven-inch 
shell into the Mercedita. It killed one man, tore open 
the steam drum, exploded, and made a hole four feet 
square in the opposite side of the boat. The escaping 
steam killed four men and scalded four others. The 
Mercedita was helpless, and the captain was compelled 
to surrender. The Palmetto State, however, did not 
take possession of the Mercedita, and left the vessel 
and crew lying where she had been damaged, while 
the Palmetto State and Chicora went off in the fog 
for another victim. 

One of the Northern vessels lying near the Mer- 
cedita was the Keystone State. Her captain had 
heard the firing on the Mercedita, and he ordered his 
anchor raised, and had started to see what was the 
trouble when he met ihe Palmetto State stealing 
along in the fog. Tlie two ships exchanged shots, 
and the Keystone State tried to run away. She met 
the Chicora and dodged in another direction, only to 
meet the Palmetto State once more. Again these two 
ships exclianged shots, and one of the shells from the 
Palmetto State entered the Keystone State and de- 
stroyed the steam pipes. The Keystone State was 
crippled and twenty men were killed, and her com- 
mander had to surrender. The Southern rams cruised 
10 



124 ^^^ NAVY m TIME OF WAR. 

about for a time firing shots here and there in the fog, 
and finally went back to Charleston, without taking 
with them the Northern vessels which they had cap- 
tured. The evening before this disaster to two of 
the Northern ships another Northern vessel, the gun- 
boat Isaac Smith, had attempted to go up one of the 
streams back of the islands that guard the "harbor of 
Charleston. This stream was called the Stono River. 
A masked battery fired upon the Smith, and a shot 
disabled the vessel's machinery, killed eight men and 
wounded seventeen, and the captain surrendered the 
ship. 

By this time some of the new monitors which the 
North had built had arrived off Charleston. Admiral 
Dupont was anxious to test the power of them, and 
he sent one, the Montauk, down to Ossabaw Sound 
near the Savannah River, to try to destroy a blockade 
runner called the Nashville, which had been made 
over into a war ship, and which was lying in the 
Ogeechee River unable to get out, because the North 
had sunk ships loaded with stone in the channel. The 
Nashville was very close to Fort McAllister, and on 
January 27, 1863, the Montauk, under command of 
Captain Worden, who had charge of the IMonitor in 
its great fight, went close to Fort McAllister with his 
new vessel and four small gunboats, and attacked the 
fort. Little damage was done on either side, although 
the Montauk was struck thirteen times. On Februarv 



FAILURES OFF CHARLESTON. 125 

1st, five days later, the attack was renewed, and the 
Montauk was struck fovty-six times, without serious 
injury. The Northern war ships continued to lie off 
the fort until February 28th, when Worden decided 
that he would destroy the l^ashville. He ran up close 
to the fort, where he could see the Nashville lying in 
the river twelve hundred yards away and across a 
marsh. Only the upper part of the Nashville could 
be seen, but Worden soon got the range, and paying- 
no attention whatever to the fort, he began to shoot at 
the Nashville. In fifty minutes one of the Montauk's 
shots pierced the Nashville's magazine, and she blew 
up. Worden retired, his vessel having been struck 
only five times by shells from Fort McAllister. 
While going down the river, however, he ran against 
a torpedo, and a hole was blown in the bottom of the 
Montauk. Worden ran his vessel on a mud bank, 
tilted her to one side by moving his guns and weights, 
patched up the bottom of his boat with an iron plate 
that he had, and returned to his station as proud of 
his victory almost as he was of the performance of 
the Monitor when she fought the Merrimac to a stand- 
still. 

By March, 1863, all of the new monitors and two 
ironclads, one of which was the New Ironsides and 
the other the Keokuk, had joined Dupont's fleet. The 
New Ironsides was really the first modern seagoing 
battle ship the United States ever had. It was built 



126 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

somewhat after the pattern of the Southern rams of 
the Merrimac type. It had a long deck house with 
sloping sides, and was heavily armored and armed. 
The Keokuk was a sort of monitor and battle ship 
combined. She had two turrets and, although she 
carried thirty-three guns, was lightly armored. She 
was an experiment. Admiral Dupont had received 
orders to attack the forts and earthworks at Charleston 
as soon as possible. He did not want to attack them, 
because he believed he would not be successful, but 
he obeyed orders promptly. He took with him seven 
monitors and his two ironclads, and on April 7, 1863, 
started up the main ship channel, past Morris Island. 
It was the strongest fleet of its size that had ever been 
gathered together. The orders were that the vessels 
should pay no attention to the earthworks on Morris 
Island or on Sullivan's Island on the northern shore 
of the harbor, but to attack Fort Sumter. The moni- 
tor Weehawken was selected to lead the fleet, because 
there had been fastened to its bow a sort of bootjack 
arrangement, called a torpedo catcher. This torpedo 
catcher was an awkward thing. When the ship rose, 
it fell; when the ship sank, it rose. The men on 
board the Weehawken were more afraid of it than 
they were of an enemy's ship. The fleet started at 
1.15 p. M., but it was not until three o'clock that the 
firing became general. The Weehawken went up to 
within a few hundred yards of the barrier between 



FAILURES OFF CHARLESTON. 127 

Fort Sumter and Sullivan's Island, bond)arding Sum- 
ter all the time. Captain John Rodgers, who was in 
command of the Weehawken, came so close to the 
barrier that he was afraid he would strike it, and he 
turned to go down the harbor. The barrier really 
amounted to very little, and if the Northern ships 
had forced it, as many of the Northern commanders 
forced barriers at other places, 'it is very probable that 
Fort Sumter and the other forts could have been de- 
stroyed from the rear; but Rodgers lacked the dash 
that some of the Northern commanders had, and the 
barrier remained untouched. There was great con- 
fusion among the Northern ships because of the tide 
and the currents and the smoke from the forts and 
vessels. To avoid a collision with the monitor Na- 
hant, the Keokuk ran close to Fort Sumter, where she 
remained for half an hour. She was struck ninety 
times in thirty minutes, and her hull and turrets were 
riddled. Her commander saw that she would proba- 
bly sink, and he steamed out of action. 

Admiral Dupont was on the New Ironsides during 
the fight. The New Ironsides drew so much water 
that it was impossible for her to go up into the harbor, 
and she lay in the main ship channel off Morris Island, 
and directly opposite Fort Wagner, a strong earthwork. 
It was learned afterward that during the entire time 
of the fight the New Ironsides was anchored directly 
over a mine containing more than two thousand 



FAILURES OFF CHARLESTON. 129 

pounds of powder. The men in Fort Wagner tried 
many times to set off the mine, but failed. The 
reason they failed was because a wagon which had 
been driven along the beach had broken the wires 
leading to the mine, and thus the i^^ew Ironsides 
escaped a terrible fate. After the fight had been go- 
ing on for an hour, Admiral Dupont signaled a recall, 
intending to renew the contest the next day. The 
captain of the Keokuk, as he went by the New Iron- 
sides, signaled that his vessel was scarcely able to 
keep afloat. She did sink that night at the place 
where she came to anchor, off Morris Island. The 
Weehawken had had one of her guns disabled, as had 
also the Passaic and Patapsco. The Nahant's turret 
was jammed and the shutter for one of the guns on 
the Nantucket was clogged, and altogether the North- 
ern fleet was in a bad condition. The vessels had 
fired about one hundred and forty shells, but the 
Southern forts which had answered the ships fired 
twenty-two hundred and twenty. The Northern ves- 
sels were hit severely during the fight, some of them 
having as many as sixty dents in their sides and tur- 
rets. Three men were killed and eleven wounded on 
the ships. It was impossible to fight again the next 
day. Dupont had been beaten. In his report on 
the fight he said: 

"We have met with a sad repulse. I shall not 
turn it into a great disaster.'' 



130 OUK NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

Dupont had learned that the South was building 
another ram at Savannah. It was like the Merrimac, 
and he decided to destroy it if possible. This made 
another of the side attacks by the fleet at Charleston, 
like that in which the Nashville was destroyed, and it 
also resulted successfully. It was one of the most 
showy victories of the navy. The Atlanta had been 
made into a ram from a former Scotch steamer called 
the Fingal. The usual house with sloping sides was 
built on the hull, and armor, such as was put on the 
other rams, was bolted to eighteen inches of wood 
backing. The armor was not of good quality, and the 
deck house was not built so strongly as those of some 
of the other rams. She had four fine guns, and was 
commanded by Lieutenant William A. Webb. Ad- 
miral DujDont had sent two of his monitors, the Wee- 
hawken and Xahant, down to the mouth of the Wil- 
mington River, below the Savannah River, through 
which the Atlanta would try to go to sea. 

On June 17, 1863, the Atlanta put out to meet 
the Northern ships. Two excursion steamers, loaded 
down with citizens of Savannah, went along to see the 
fight. The Weehawken and Nahant started out for 
deep water, and waited for the Atlanta. When a mile 
and a half away the Atlanta opened fire on the Wee- 
hawken. The Weehawken did not reply until she 
was within three hundred yards of the Atlanta. The 
first shot from the Weehawken went through the At- 



132 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

lanta's deck house, and the splinters of iron and wood 
wounded sixteen men. The second shot from the 
Weehawken struck the pilot house and wrecked it, 
wounding the two pilots and the two helmsmen in- 
side. The third shot hit one of the shutters to a port- 
hole and partly tore open the side of the deck house. 
The Atlanta fired eight shots during the fight, and the 
Weehawken five. After the fifth shot had been fired 
by the Weehawken, Lieutenant Webb saw that the 
Atlanta was beaten, and hauled down his flag, while 
the excursionists, who had come out to see a great 
victory, went home as fast as they could, and very 
much downhearted after a fight which had lasted only 
fifteen minutes. 

Dupont's failure at Charleston caused the Navy 
Department to make a change of commanders there. 
Dupont was a splendid man, highly educated, very 
earnest and loyal, a well-trained sailor and fighter, 
charming in his manner, and kind to his men, but he 
was unable to repeat at Charleston the success he had 
had at Port Royal. With regret, the Navy Depart- 
ment decided to remove him, and sent Admiral J. A. 
B. Dahlgren, the inventor of a famous gun, and also 
a fine sailor and fighter, to take Dupont's place. 

Dahlgren arrived on July 4, 1863, and on July 
10th he made an attack on Fort Wagner on Morris 
Island, assisting the forces of the Northern army 
which had been landed there. Dahlgren destroyed 



FAILURES OFF CHARLESTON. 



133 



some earthworks below the fort, and then drew up 
opposite the fort, and for nine hours shelled it with 
his monitors. The land forces attacked the fort also, 
but had to withdraw. On July 11th the troops again 




United States ^Monitor towini? a disabled gunboat in a storm 
oti" Cunimings Point battery. 

attacked Fort Wagner, with the help of the ships, but 
the Southern forces repelled them. The monitors 
were hit only a few times during the two day's en- 
gagement, and the fort didn't seem to be damaged 
much. On July 18th the ships and the troops made 
another land and water attack on Fort Wagner, and 
again the troops were repulsed. 

It was not until August iTth that the fort was 
silenced at last. Four monitors and the Xew Iron- 
sides ran up to within four hundred and fifty yards of 
Fort Wagner, and seven gunboats, lying at a longer 
distance, helped them shell the fort, while the troops 
stormed it. After two hours' fighting, Fort Wagner 



134 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

was silenced but not taken. A shot struck the pilot 
house of the monitor Catskill during the fight, killing 
Commander G. W. Rodgers, one of the best men in 
the navy, and Paymaster Woodbury, and wounding 
two other men. During this fight Admiral Dahlgren 
ran within a mile of Fort Sumter. 

On the night of August 23d the monitors ran up 
close to Fort Sumter and fired upon it for five hours. 
The monitors were hit seventy-one times, and the leg 
of Captain Badger, of the Weehawken, was broken 
by a flying splinter. On the night of September 6th 
the Southern forces left Fort Wagner and Morris 
Island, and on the next night the Weehawken, in 
running into the harbor, went aground and remained 
there for several hours. When daylight came the 
Southern men saw her fast in the mud, and began to 
fire on her from the forts and earthworks, and the 
New Ironsides and the other monitors ran in and shot 
at the forts on Sullivan's and James Islands until the 
Weehawken was floated off the mud by the rising 
tide. 

The night attack on Fort Sumter by the ships had 
been more successful than the Northern men knew. 
General Beauregard, who was in charge of the South- 
ern forces, said later that if the Northern ships had 
kept up this kind of work they would have destroyed 
the fort, but Admiral Dahlgren did not know this, 
and not having had much success up to this time, he 



FAILURES OFF CHARLESTON. I35 

decided to try to capture Fort Sumter in another wav. 
He made uj) a boating expedition under charge of 
Commander T. H. Stevens, and sent four hundred 
men, on the night of September 8th, to try to storm 
the place. A tug towed the boats to within eight 
hundred yards of the fort. One division was to 
land on the northwest side of the fort, and the others 
on the southeast side. By a mistake they all rowed 
to the northwest side. The Southern forces saw 
them coming, and met them with a sharp fire. 
Only a few of the boats landed their crews, and these 
men were captured. The Northern side lost three 
men killed, and thirteen officers and one hundred and 
two men were taken prisoners. 

That ended the active hard fighting off Charles- 
ton, but there were several exciting incidents yet to 
occur in that harbor. The first of these was the sink- 
ing of the monitor Weehawken, which occurred on 
December 6, 1863. The monitors had been built so 
that the sterns were lower than the bow^s. The water 
which leaked into them always ran to the stern, where 
it was pumped out. On December 6th a heavy load 
of powder and shot was placed in the bow of the 
Weehawken, lowering it several inches. No one 
seemed to notice that the water which came in was 
not running^ toward the stern. Several swells sent a 
lot of water into the openings containing the chains to 
the anchors, and suddenly it was seen that the Wee- 



136 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

ImAvken was about to founder. She put up the signal 
" assistance required," but sank within five minutes, 
carrying down four officers and twenty seamen. 

It was about this time that the South decided to 
make use of submarine boats to destroy the xs^orthern 
ships. They built a craft called the David, which was 
fifty-four feet long, and six feet in diameter, and 
shaped like a cigar. She was commanded by Lieu- 
tenant Glassell, of the Southern navy, with a volun- 
teer crew. She had a torpedo on the end of a spar. 
On the night of October 5, 1863, this little boat went 
down the harbor partly submerged. Her top, which 
looked like a plank, was all that could be seen. When 
she came near the Xew Ironsides the watch saw this 
strange object floating near the A^essel, and sounded an 
alarm. By the time the crew Avere at their posts a 
big explosion occurred close beside the Ironsides, 
throwing up a great quantity of water, and lifting the 
ship to some extent. Neither boat was damaged 
much, and two of the crew of the David clung to her 
and took her back to Charleston in the confusion that 
occurred. 

This attack was so successful that the South built 
several boats of the David kind, and one of them, 
which had a famous career, the details of which vdll 
be told later, went down the harbor to the Housatonic 
on February 17, 1864, and exploded a torpedo be- 
neath that ship. Both vessels were lost. Five of 



FAILURES OFF CHARLESTON. 137 

the Housatonic's crew were drowned; the rest took 
refuge in the rigging, and were rescued by small 
boats. 

That was the last of the thrilling naval fighting in 
and around Charleston harbor. The city did not sur- 
render to the naval forces of the North. From first 
to last it resisted all attempts to take it from the sea. 



CHAPTEK YIII. 

CAPTURE OF FORT FISHER. 

The last great figliting work of the navy in the 
civil war was the capture of Fort Fisher at the mouth 
of the Cape Fear River, ^orth Carolina. The city 
of Wilmington is situated a few miles up the Cape 
Fear River, and it was the most important base of 
supplies the Southern forces had. There were two 
entrances to the mouth of the river, and it was 
through these that more of the vessels called blockade 
runners, which brought supplies from English and 
other ports, passed up to Wilmington. The South 
erected on the strip of sand on the northern entrance 
to Cape Fear River probably the strongest fort or 
earthworks that had ever been known up to tliat time. 
It was Fort Fisher. Late in 1864 the chief army of 
the South was almost hemmed in at Richmond by 
General Grant. Supplies could reach Richmond by 
railroad from Wilmington, and it had long been seen 
that one way to hasten the fall of the South was to 
capture Wilmington and stop the arrival of more sup- 
plies of food and powder and shot. Although the 
138 



CAPTUEE OF FORT FISHER. 139 

coast liad been blockaded off the mouth of the Cape 
Fear River, no attack had been made upon Fort 
Fisher and the other defenses which the South had 
built along that river to protect Wilmington. 

Late in 1864 the ^N'orth decided that Fort Fisher 
must be taken. All the other places of importance 
along the coast and up the Mississippi had been cap- 
tured, with the exception of Charleston, and it was 
possible, therefore, to use nearly all the large and 
small ships of war that at that time were in the navy 
in attacking Fort Fisher. The Navy Department 
wanted Farragut to take charge of the ships in this 
work, but Farragut's health was bad at this time, and 
Admiral Porter, who had done such good work on 
the Mississippi, was chosen in his place. The work of 
taking the fort was to be a navy and army movement, 
and, as has been seen. Porter was always at his best 
when helping the army with his ships. It was on 
December 18, 1864, that the fleet, the strongest that 
the North had yet formed, sailed from Hampton 
Roads. With the fleet were a large number of army 
transports carrying nearly four thousand troops, un- 
der the command of General B. F. Butler. Alto- 
gether there were nearly one hundred and fifty ves- 
sels in the expedition. 

It was not until December 23d that all the vessels 

arrived at the place of meeting, about twenty-five 

miles east of Fort Fisher. Admiral Porter wanted to 
11 



140 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

bombard the fort at once. His plan was for the troops 
to storm the fort after he had driven the Southern 
men from their guns. General Butler, however, had 
another plan. He thought that he could wreck the 
fort and frighten the Southern soldiers away by ex- 
ploding a great amount of powder in a ship directly 
in front of the earthworks. 

Admiral Porter and General Butler were not 
good friends, but the admiral yielded to the gen- 
eral's plan, and the experiment was tried. It was 
almost a laughable affair, but it showed at the same 
time the bravery of some of the i^orthern sailors. 
Porter took the old steamer Louisiana, and placed 
more than two hundred tons of powder in her. He 
laid wires through the vessel, and then called for vol- 
unteers to perform the work of blowing her up. 
Eleven men were selected for the task. The plan was 
to tow the Louisiana to within three hundred or four 
hundred yards of the fort, which lay close to the 
ocean, and near which there was deep water. So sure 
was General Butler that the blowing up of this vessel 
would have a terrible and dangerous result, that he 
sent some of his transports fifty miles away. Porter's 
ships were ordered to lie twenty miles out to sea. The 
Louisiana was to be blown up about midnight. But- 
ler expected that the gases from the explosion would 
roll in over the fort and kill the men who were left 
after the fort itself had been blown to pieces. As soon 



CAPTURE OF FORT FISHER. 



141 



as the explosion occurred, the war ships were to hurry 
to the fort, and if by that time anybody was alive, 
they were to bombard the place until Butler's trans- 
ports would arrive two or three hours later, when the 
fort was to be stormed by the troops which were to 
be landed. 

It was on the night of December 23, 1864, that 
Commander A. C. Rhind and ten men set out with 




Interior of Fort Fisher. 



the Louisiana to anchor her and blow her up. It was 
looked upon as one of the most dangerous feats that 
had been tried in the war, and on this account the 
men who took charge of the work were as brave as if 
the plan had been worth trying. All the lights on 
the tug and on the Louisiana were put out, and at 



142 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

11.30 p. M. the two vessels slowly approached the 
fort. Kot a Northern vessel Avas in sight anywhere, 
and the men in the fort thought the Louisiana was a 
blockade runner. The men on the Louisiana lit the 
fuses and started some clockwork machinery, which, 
after about an hour, was to let some weights fall and 
explode the powder in the various parts of the ship 
all at once. 

Everything worked well, and all the men got off 
the Louisiana safely by midnight and steamed away 
on the tug as fast as they could go, so as to get out 
of reach of the damage that would be done. The men 
on the fleet twenty miles out to sea waited for the 
shock, and some of them probably held fast to the 
sides of their ships so as not to be blown away. 
Butler and his men were so far off that he felt that 
nothing serious could happen to them. It was at 
1.40 A. M. that the men on the ships saw a faint flash 
on the horizon, something like a gleam of lightning, 
and then a dull sound rolled across the water and that 
was all. A cloud of powder smoke, which was an hour 
in passing, drifted over the fleet after a time, and then 
all the vessels started at full speed to learn what had 
been the result of Butler's scheme. Not a man in the 
fort had been injured and no damage had been done. 
The men in the fort thought a boiler on the ship had 
exploded. Porter saw at once that the old-fashioned 
ways of capturing a fort would have to be tried, and 



CAPTURE OF PORT FISHER. 143 

when Butler came up and saw tlie failure lie did not 
feel very jDleasant. In writing about it afterward, 
General Butler said: 

" The effect that I expected was that the gases 
from the burning powder would so disturb the air as 
to render it impossible for men to breathe within two 
hundred yards; that the magazines of the fort would 
be burst in, and possibly the magazines themselves be 
exploded; that by the enormous missiles that would be 
set in motion, and by the concussion many men would 
be killed." 

The explosion was such a fizzle that the brave 
men who did the work never received any reward for 
it. At 11.30 A. M. the next morning Porter moved his 
vessels close in to the fort and began to bombard it. 
To understand Avhat a task this was a description of the 
fort is necessary. It Avas really a series of about twen- 
ty forts of sand. Such a fort is the hardest to destroy. 
-It was in the shape of a capital letter L. The long 
side of the fort began with a mound of sand eighty 
feet high, in which there were two very strong guns. 
This part of the fort stretched for fourteen hundred 
yards along the ocean front. In the heaps of sand 
which composed this side of the fort there were seven- 
teen very large guns. At the northern end of the 
ocean side of the fort the earthworks made a turn at 
right angles, and stretched across the strip of sand for 
five hundred yards to the Cape Fear Kiver. This 



144 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

stretch was also made up of great mounds of sand, 
which were really se2)arate forts, and behind these 
mounds w^ere twenty-one great guns, mounted at 
regular intervals. 

It was seen that if the fort was to be captured by 
a land force, the soldiers must be landed above the 
fort, and march down and try to storm it on this short 
side. A great ditch was dug by the Southern men in 
front of the mounds on this side of the fort, and a 
row of logs with sharpened ends was planted in front 
of the ditch from the ocean across to the river. Out 
in front of the logs a large number of torpedoes had 
been hidden in the sand. Wires ran to these torpe- 
does from the fort, and the idea was to blow up 
the torpedoes when the troops were passing over 
the;n. 

The sand mounds of the fort were open at the rear 
only, and were of various shaj^es. Most of them had 
walls forty feet bigh, and ])etween them were what 
were called " traverses," or sand heaps about twenty 
feet higlier. The guns in the fort were of the best 
make, and altogether no such strong fort had been 
made during the war. 

It was 11.30 A.M. on December 24, 1864, that 
Admiral Porter gave the signal for his ironclads and 
other large vessels to go close to the fort and to begin 
the bombardment. Porter raised the signal to fire 
slowly, and until dark the firing was kept up, when 



CAPTURE OF FORT FISHER. 145 

Porter gave the signal to his ships to withdraw. It 
was really nothing more than target practice on both 
sides. In fact, Admiral Porter called it that. Little 
damage was done to the fort, and the chief injury 
to the ships was caused by the bursting of the Parrott 
rifled guns on five vessels. Altogether sixteen men 
were killed and twenty-three were wounded in this 
way. The Southern forces had been increased in a 
hurry, after the explosion on the Louisiana, and it 
was a harder task, therefore, to try to destroy the fort. 
On the next day three thousand of General Butler's 
troops were landed on the beach, five miles above the 
fort. They advanced gradually, and the skirmishers 
actually went right up to the fort itself. One ofiicer 
even climbed a parapet, seized a flag, and carried it 
away. Another man rushed inside one of the mounds, 
knocked a Southern soldier off a horse, and brought 
the horse out. 

Meanwhile General Butler, with General Weit- 
zel, who was in direct command of the troops on shore, 
came down in a boat along the beach. Butler told 
Weitzel that he didn't think they could take the fort, 
but he wanted Weitzel to look into the matter care- 
fully and tell him what he thought about it. Weitzel 
took the hint, and he soon reported to Butler that he 
was quite sure they could not capture the fort, and 
Admiral Porter that night, having been bombarding 
the fort all day, was surprised to get a letter from 



146 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

Butler in which, after saying that he did not think the 
fort could be captured, Butler said : 

" I shall, therefore, sail for Hampton Roads as 
soon as the transj^ort fleet can be got in order/' 

Butler did sail away, and Porter, who had been 
doing all he could to reduce the fort when Butler's 
troops were on shore, was angry over the result. 
Twenty men had been killed and sixty-three wounded 
on the ships in the two days' bombardment. In the 
fort there were six killed and fifty-two wounded. 
Eight of the guns of the fort had been made useless, 
two small magazines had been blown up, and several 
little buildings burned. The attack on the fort had 
been a failure. 

Porter did not intend to give up. He wrote to 
Washington, and the War Department, through the 
President, ordered General Grant to send General A. 
H. Terry with six thousand soldiers to assist Porter. 
These soldiers landed on the beach above the fort on 
January 13, 1865. Porter moved his splendid fleet 
close to the fort on the same day, and began another 
bombardment. In his firing lines he had forty-two 
ships, of which six were ironclads, five being monitors 
and the other being the New Ironsides. He moved 
his ironclads close to the sharp corner in the fort, and 
stretched a line of thirteen vessels up the beach above 
them, where they could fire upon the short side of the 
earthworks. Two other lines of vessels were stretched 



CAPTURE OF FORT FISHER. 147 

along the long side of the fort on the ocean front. 
This made three lines of ships and one group, the guns 
of which commanded every part of the fort. Aboui 
half a mile out to sea from his lines along the long- 
side of the fort and in four divisions were stretched 
his reserve vessels, most of them being small. These 
vessels were used from time to time in helping the 
troops and in carrying messages. 

Porter began the bombardment at 3.30 p. m. on 
January 13th. It lasted until nearly six o'clock. It 
is said to have been a grand sight. It continued until 
after darkness set in, and the bursting of the shells 
above the mounds of the fort were like flashes of light- 
ning darting from heaven to earth. The roar of the 
guns was terrible, and the smoke seemed to unite witli 
the clouds and to bring the sky down to the very 
ground. Porter ordered his vessels to withdraw, but 
left his ironclads in position through the night and at 
intervals threw shells into the fort. On that night 
General Terry visited Porter on his flagship, and they 
made their plans to storm the fort. It was decided to 
land sixteen hundred sailors and four hundred marines 
from the ships, and these were to storm the ocean side 
of the fort while the troops marched down on the land 
side. On the next day, January 14th, the ships con- 
tinued the bombardment of the fort, as on the day be- 
fore, and that night the sailors and marines were 
landed. The troops had marched down to within two 



148 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

miles of the fort, and had thrown up barriers of sand 
to protect themselves. 

It was arranged that the assault should take place 
at three o'clock on the afternoon of January 15th. 
The sailors were in three divisions and the marines in 
one. The sailors were armed with cutlasses and re- 
volvers only. The plan was for the sailors to rush 
up the beach, shooting their revolvers and swinging 
their cutlasses, while the marines with their muskets 
were to shoot down the men who might climb to the 
top of the mounds to keep the sailors back. By some 
mistake there was little order among the sailors. 
They had landed in small parties and had never drilled 
together on land, and for a time there was confusion 
as to who should command them. They were very 
close to the fort, while the army forces were a long 
distance away. The sailors had thrown up some sand 
about them to protect themselves until the signal 
should be given to start the assault. The signal agreed 
upon was the blowing of the whistle of every vessel 
in the fleet. 

Exactly at three o'clock every ship's whistle began 
to blow. They made a great shrieking noise. With a 
cheer the sailors and marines dashed up the beach. 
At once hundreds of Southern soldiers leaped to the 
top of the mound, and began to fire into the running- 
sailors and marines. It was a bloody struggle. The 
men from the ships had nearly half a mile to go. The 



CAPTURE OF FORT FISHER. 149 

sailors could do nothing with their revolvers and cut- 
lasses until they reached the works, and the marines 
did not protect them well with their muskets. On they 
kept, however, although they were swept down, dozens 
at a time. They reached the wooden palisades and 
some of them passed through openings which the guns 
of the ships had made and went almost to the mounds. 
They were beaten back, however, and eighty-two were 
killed and two hundred and sixty-nine wounded. 
They rallied three times before they finally fled. 

^N'early every man that could be spared inside the 
fort had been sent to beat off the attack by the sailors 
and marines. Meantime the men of the army had 
been marching quietly along the edge of the Cape Fear 
Eiver, and partly protected by its banks. They 
reached the last mound on the short side of the fort al- 
most without opposition. Then began a terrific strug- 
gle. The soldiers climbed up the first barrier of 
sand, and hand to hand the men from the North 
and South fought one another. The captains of 
the various sliips in the fleet saw the close fighting 
and they sent their shells straight at the Southern 
men who were in conflict with the storming soldiers 
of the North. Foot by foot, aided by the firing of 
the fleet, the soldiers advanced. As they would appear 
on the top of a parapet or mound the sailors on the 
ships would give cheer after cheer, and the struggle 
would be continued to another mound. By night- 



150 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

fall all of the separate forts on the short side of the 
earthworks had been carried, and the march of the 
Northern men began slowly along the ocean front of 
the fort which the sailors had failed to carry. It 
was not until nearly ten o'clock at night that the last 
mound of the fort, the one which was eighty feet high, 
and which stood at the top of the L, was carried. 
When the Southern fire had stopped entirely hundreds 
upon hundreds of rockets were sent up from the ships, 
and cheer upon cheer rang across the water to the 
shore. More than seven hundred of the soldiers were 
killed or wounded. It was a glorious attack and a 
brave defense. Less than two thousand men inside 
the fort had held the ISTorthern forces at bay until 
that time. E'early all the Southern troops in the fort 
were taken prisoners. To show how well they had de- 
fended the place, it maybe said that during the first at- 
tack on Fort Fisher, when General Butler failed to as- 
sault it, the vessels of Porter's fleet threw fifteen thou- 
sand shells into it. During the second attack the ships 
threw about twenty-two thousand shells into the fort. 
There were several small forts up the Cape Fear 
Kiver to Wilmington, but Admiral Porter's ships soon 
destroyed them, and in February, 1865, less than two 
months before the South gave in at last, the city of 
Wilmington was occupied by the ^N'orthern forces. 
No more gallant work was done during the entire war 
than the storming of Fort Fisher. 



CHAPTER IX. 

BRAVERY IN THE NAVY IN THE CIVIL WAR GUSHINg's 

DEEDS. 

In a war like that between the North and South, 
where hundreds of thousands of brave men were fight- 
ing on both sides, scarcely a day passed without some 
man showing unusual courage. 'No one could even 
begin to tell of all the brave deeds that were done 
on both sides during the war. Men of the South and 
men of the N^orth alike were as bold and brave as 
was to be expected from a people whose forefathers 
won their liberty in the great Eevolution, beginning 
in 1776. Both sides were made up of Americans. 
It called for as much bravery, perhaps, to lie in the 
swamps day after day as to storm a fort; to shovel 
coal into boilers in the war ships as to land on a 
beach and try to take a fort; to go without food 
and endure the hardships of heat and cold as to face 
a rain of bullets in the excitement of battle. 

There were many instances, however, of bravery 

on land and sea which drew to the men who did the 

deeds great attention, and made the men heroes in 

151 



152 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

the eyes of the world. Their deeds live in history 
because they were unusual and because the world 
loves to hear and to read of daring for the sake of 
one's country. The name that stands out foremost 
for brave acts in the navy during the civil war is 
that of William Barker Gushing. It is safe to say 
that no country at ^ny time ever produced a braver 
man. He lived only thirty-one years, but his short 
life was crowded with thrilling events. His bravery 
brought him the rewards of great fame and honor, 
but he never seemed to care as much for them as 
he did simply to do his duty. What has been called 
^^ the glory of dying in battle " evidently aj^pealed 
to him to such an extent that he knew no fear and 
was eager, time and time again, to face what seemed 
to be certain death for the sake of his country. He 
placed his duty toward his country above everything 
else, and left an example of courage that makes one 
of the brightest pages in American history. Had 
he lived to finish his career in the navy, he would 
have been the highest ranking officer by the time 
he reached middle age. He was a mere boy when 
he first showed what was in him, and his glorious 
deeds belong to the whole American people. Five 
times in his career he received the personal thanks 
of the Secretary of the Navy. He lived through the 
civil war, but died a few" years afterward of brain 
fever, and as a mark of respect tQ his memory thq 



BRAVERY IN THE NAVY IN THE CIVIL WAR. 153 

first modern torpedo boat that the United States built 
was named after him. 

Gushing was born in Wisconsin of a noted family 
on November 24,1842. He entered the Naval Acad- 
emy at Annapolis in 1857, but resigned on March 
23, 1861, just before the war began. He entered 
the navy again in May, 1861, and on the very day he 
began his service he captured the first prize of the 
war, a schooner loaded with tobacco. He was made a 
lieutenant on July 16, 1862. It was in November 
of that year that he performed his first great act of 
daring. He was in command of the small steamer 
Ellis at the mouth of New Kiver, N. C, which 
flows into the Atlantic about forty miles below Cape 
Lookout. Into the New Kiver, about twenty miles 
from the ocean, flows the River Onslow, and a few 
miles up that river is a small town called Onslow 
Court House. There was a large amount of arms 
and military stores at Onslow Court House, and 
Cushing decided to try to capture them. He started 
up the New Eiver on November 23, 1862, and 
when he had gone five miles met an outward-bound 
steamer loaded with cotton and turpentine. The 
men on the steamer burned the vessel and cargo to 
prevent Cushing from capturing the ship. Cushing 
finally reached Onslow Court House at one o'clock 
that afternoon. He captured twenty-five rifles, two 
small schooners, and the mail from Wilmington, 



154 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

N. C. He also destroyed a large salt works at the 
place. 

Taking the prize schooners with him, Gushing, 
early the next morning, started to return to the mouth 
of the New Kiver. He had gone only a short distance 
when some Southern troops began to fire upon him 
from the bank with two cannon. After an hour of 
sharp fighting, Gushing, with his guns on the Ellis, 
drove the enemy off and then started on again. The 
pilot in charge of the Ellis soon ran the vessel on a 
sand bar. The headway of the vessel carried it over 
the bar, and Gushing found that his steamer was in a 
sort of lake with sand bars all about him. He was in 
a dangerous place. He sent some men ashore to see 
if they could capture the cannon which they had 
silenced a short time before, but it was found that 
the cannon had been taken away. His next move 
was to bring one of his captured schooners along- 
side the Ellis, and to load into it everything that 
could be moved from the Ellis, except a pivot gun, 
some powder and shell, two tons of coal, and some 
small arms. Still it was found that the Ellis could 
not be moved into deep water. Gushing, therefore, 
placed most of his men on one of the schooners and 
ordered them to go down to the mouth of the river, 
while he and six volunteers remained on the Ellis 
to see if they could not find some way out of the 
trotible, and if they could not, to fight to the last. 



BRAVERY IN THE NAVY IN THE CIVIL WAR. 155 

These seven men stayed all night on the boat, and 
the next morning the enemy began to fire upon them 
with four cannon from different places on the river's 
bank. It was a losing fight. Cushing's boat was shot 
to pieces, and there was nothing left for him and his 
men to do but to get into a small boat and row down 
the river, under the fire of the enemy. After shooting 
the large gun on the Ellis for the last time, he set fire 
to the vessel, leaving her flag flying at the mast, and 
he and his men took the long pull of a mile and a half, 
escaping with their lives. He rounded a point in the 
river just before some Southern cavalry dashed out 
upon it in the hope of cutting him off. The Ellis 
shortly blew up, and when Gushing got back to the 
steamer Hetzel he made a report which he closed by 
asking that a court be appointed to inquire into the 
loss of his ship, and, in his own words, " to see if the 
honor of the flag has suffered in my hands." Gushing 
was then only twenty years old. 

Gushing next Avon attention by his acts of bravery 
on and near the Gape Fear River, ^. G., where he 
had been doing blockade duty. It was on the night 
of February 28, 1864, that he started on a trip up 
the river, which seemed almost foolhardy. A short 
distance from the coast is a little town called Smith- 
ville. There was a garrison of about one thousand 
soldiers there, under command of General Hebert. 
Gushing's plan was to capture General Hebert and 
13 



156 OUR NAVY IN TIME OP WAR. 

kidnap him, and also take any small vessels tliat lie 
might find at the place. He took with him Acting- 
Ensign J. E. Jones, Acting-Master's Mate William L. 
llowarth, and twenty men in two small boats. He 
passed by Eort Caswell without being seen, and 
reached the town of Smithville, where he landed in 
front of the hotel of the place and directly opposite 
the garrison. He left most of his men in the boats, 
and with two officers and a seaman walked boldly into 
General Hebert's office. The general was not there, 
having gone to Wilmington on business, but Gushing 
captured an engineer officer in the place, and with his 
prisoner went back to his boats. The sentries were so 
astonished at this deed that they did not give the alarm 
until after he had passed Fort Caswell on his way 
down the river and was safe. 

On June 23 Gushing did another act of daring up 
the Gape Fear River. It was supposed that the South- 
ern ram Raleigli, which on the night of May 6, 1864, 
had attacked two of the Northern vessels on blockade 
duty, and then had gone up the river, was about to 
come down again, and Gushing, with Jones- and 
Howarth and fifteen other men, started up the stream 
to destroy her. They went up past Fort Gaswell and 
Smithville safely, but a short distance beyond Smith- 
ville, the moon having come out from behind a cloud, 
they were discovered by the sentries. Gushing 
turned to go down the stream, but as soon as he 



BRAVERY IN THE NAVY IN THE CIVIL WAR. 157 

got in the shadow of the river's bank he put about 
and went up the river once more. When within 
seven miles of Wihnington the party landed and 
remained for that night and the next day in hid- 
ing in a swamp. On the second night Gushing and 
his men captured a fishing party. He made his 
prisoners act as guides, and he examined the de- 
fenses of Wilmington in the river three miles below 
the city. 

The next morning the party went up a small creek 
until Gushing found a road. This road led to the 
main road between Wilmington and Fort Fisher. 
Gushing left most of his men in his boat and lay in 
hiding along the main road to see what was going on 
there. Soon the mail carrier from Fort Fisher to 
Wilmington came along on horseback, and Gushing 
captured him. In a short time the mail carrier from 
Wilmington to Fort Fisher came along, and Gushing 
tried to capture him, pursuing him on the horse of the 
first carrier. The second carrier escaped. Gushing's 
men by this time were very hungry, having had noth- 
ing to eat for nearly one day. Howarth put on the 
clothes of the captured carrier and went to a store. 
He soon returned with food. 

The third night had come and Gushing, having 
cut all the telegraph wires in the neighborhood, and 
having found that the Raleigh had been destroyed 
by the Southern men themselves, turned to go down 



158 ^^^ NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

the river to his ship. The moon had risen just as he 
reached the mouth of the Cape Fear Kiver, and Gush- 
ing and his party were discovered by the Southern 
guard boat on duty there. He started to attack the 
guard boat, when three other boats came out of the 
shadow on one side of the river and five more from 
the shadow on the other side. For the moment it 
seemed as if Cushing's time had com.e at last. He 
made a quick turn with his boat, however, and ran 
into the shadow of the western bank of the river, 
and then, the Southern boats having lost sight of 
him, he slipped out to sea and escaped with all his 
men. 

Cushing's most daring exploit occurred late in 
October of that same year, 1864. The South had 
built a ram called the Albemarle, patterned after 
the Merrimac, Atlanta, and other vessels of that class, 
to try to destroy the ^Northern vessels in the sounds 
along the Xorth Carolina coast. The Albemarle was 
built up the Roanoke River, and on April 17, 1864, 
attacked two Northern vessels, the Miami and South- 
field, at Plymouth, K. C, on the Roanoke. The 
Southfield was sunk, and the Miami retreated to Albe- 
marle Sound. On May 5th the Albemarle came 
down the Roanoke River and had a fight with three 
small ^Northern vessels, called double-enders, because 
they were pointed at the bow and stern. They were 
the Sassacus, Wyalusing, and Mattabesett. These 



BRAVERY IN THE NAVY IN THE CIVIL WAR. 159 

little vessels raninied the Albemarle, captured her 
store vessel, and she went back up the river. The 
Sassacus was disabled. The Albemarle came down 
the river once after that, but did no fighting. 

Gushing decided that the Albemarle must be de- 
stroyed. There had been built in New York two 
small boats called picket boats. They were crude tor- 
pedo boats. A torpedo was attached to the end of a 
long pole which stuck out ten or twelve feet beyond 
the bow of each of the little boats. The end of the 
pole could be raised or lowered so as to place the tor- 
pedo at a given point above or below water, and then 
the torpedo could be exploded by a man who stood in 
the bow of the little boat and pulled a string. One of 
these torpedo boats was lost while being taken South, 
bnt Gushing took the other, with a party of twenty- 
two men beside himself, and started on the night of 
October 27, 1864, up the Roanoke River to blow the 
Albemarle to pieces. The Southern forces had ex- 
pected such an attempt, and had placed a guard on 
the sunken steamer Southiield in the river with 
rockets and rifles, so as to alarm the force at Plymouth, 
which was protecting the Albemarle at that place. 
Gushing intended to surprise the guard on the South- 
field and capture them before they could give warn- 
ing of the coming of the party to the men at Plym- 
outh. Before starting out he said to a friend: 

" This means another stripe or a coffin." 



1(50 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 




AOM/ffAi. Of THE A/AVr. 



UNION JACK 

J)ist/nchi/e f/siff offhe l/.S A'^uy. 



/fSA/f AO\tl^JKl.. 




COA/IMO£>0^£ . 



scAj/OM orr/cAH. 




yfeur /7d7niral Commoc/ove . Capimm. eommmncier. 




^leu/ . Com'r. Zi'eutenatit. Knsiffn. A/at^ai Sadei . 



"^ar 



/^Of^COMMJ&SiO/^CO Of^/C£ffS. 



^ 25 

^asfef at arms . Coxswain. 




<iuarlermaster. Bandmamtec. 



~.j9s u/orn __ 

Gunner. GJn'e-/ yboman. ,/^" Ounner)s mat*. JUncA^niBt. 



Military insignia of the United States navy. 
(Rank of commodore exists no longer.) 



BRAVERY IN THE NAVY IN THE CIVIL WAR. 161 

The night was very dark and rain fell in showers. 
The little torpedo boat went up the river very slowly, 
and close to the bank in the gloom. Little by little 
they went near the sunken vessel Southfield. They 
got ready to spring aboard and fight the Southern sol- 
diers there, but to their surprise the guard did not see 
them, although they passed within thirty yards of the 
vessel. Passing round a bend in the river, they came 
in sight of the town and of the fires of the double force 
of sentries who were on the bank. The fires had been 
allowed to go down, and Gushing and his men were 
not seen. He thought that he would be able to reach 
the town, land his men, rush on board the Albemarle, 
and either start down the river with her or blow her 
up. Just as he was within a very short distance of the 
ram a dog, which was really a better watch than the 
sentries, discovered the party and began to bark. 
Other dogs joined in, the sentries were aroused, bells 
and rattles were sounded, wood was heaped upon the 
fires, and in a few seconds after the alarms were 
sounded there was great noise where only a short time 
before there had been complete stillness. Soldiers 
ran to and fro, and officers were shouting their orders 
in the streets of the town. 

Gushing had some of the men of his party in a 
small boat which he had towed up the river. He cut 
the small boat loose and ordered the men to go back 
and capture the force on the Southfield. Standing 



162 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

erect in the bow of his torpedo boat, with his faithful 
Howarth beside him and with twelve other men, he 
steamed straight for the Albemarle, having given 
the order " ahead fast." When within a few yards of 
the ram he saw that a barrier of cypress logs had been 
built about her about fifteen feet away from the sides. 
He saw that he must get over that barrier before he 
could place his torpedo against the vessel. He ran 
one hundred yards up the river, made a sweeping turn, 
and, with the current of the river to help him, came 
down toward the ram at full speed. A volley of buck- 
shot swept over the little boat, tearing the back of 
Cushing's coat and ripping off the sole of his shoe. 
The crew of the Albemarle were running out their 
cannon, and, as the little boat came close to the bar- 
rier, Gushing called out at the top of his voice: 

" Leave the ram. We're going to blow you up." 
The little boat struck the barrier, the bow ran up 
and over the slippery logs, and the small cannon on 
the torpedo boat was fired. Instantly Gushing lowered 
the torpedo at the end of the spar, placed it close 
against the side of the Albemarle, and just as he was 
about to pull the string to explode the torpedo, the 
muzzle of one of the largest cannon on the ship was 
aimed straight down into his little craft. Gusliing 
pulled the string, but not a second too soon. As the 
torpedo exploded the Albemarle w^as lifted a little, 
and the blast of the great cannon went a few inches 



BRAVERY IN THE NAVY IN THE CIVIL WAR. 163 

over the heads of Gushing and his men, instead of kill- 
ing them all. The ram was wrecked completely. 

Gushing called to every man of his party to save 
himself, and, taking off his coat and shoes, jumped 
into the river and swam down the stream. Half a 
mile below he met one of his party named Woodman, 
who was about to sink. Gushing struggled to save 
the man's life, but failed and was nearly drowned him- 
self. He reached the shore and hid in a swamp all the 
next day. At night he learned from a negro that 
the Albemarle had been sunk. Taking a small 
skiff, he went down the river alone, and, half 
dead, he reached the Northern vessels. He was the 
only man of the party to escape. Two were drowned, 
and the rest were taken prisoners. Gushing again 
showed his bravery in the attack on Fort Fisher, when 
he led a party of sailors up the beach against the fort. 
He was made a commander in 1872, being the young- 
est man holding that grade in the navy. He died in 
Washington in 1874. 

Some of the bravest men in the United States 
navy in the civil war were the pilots in the river steam- 
boats on the upper Mississippi and its branches. It 
was in the action at Fort Henry that two pilots were 
killed, Marsliall IT. Ford and James McBride. In 
the attack on Fort Donelson two more were killed, 
Frank Riley and William Ilinton. Another pilot had 
been killed down the river near Fort Donelson a day 






o 

c 
*3 

Eh 

o 

5 



BRAVERY IN THE NAVY IN THE CIVIL WAR. 165 

before. These river pilots were brave because they 
knew it was almost certain death to them to go into 
action. The cannon of the Southern forts were aimed 
at the pilot houses first of all, in the hope of killing 
the men in them, thus disabling the vessels. Pilots 
were wounded in scores of fights along the Mississippi 
and up the streams that flow into it, especially from 
Arkansas. 

Brave as these men were, there were others at 
various times during the war who showed their cour- 
age below decks when death seemed at hand, and there 
was little chance for escape. One of these men was on 
the Southern ram Arkansas, which passed through Far- 
ragut's entire fleet above Vicksburg. A large shot 
from one of the Northern vessels had entered the en- 
gine room of the Arkansas and set the ship on fire. A 
man named Stevens seized a hose, ran down into the 
engine room, and fought the fire all by himself, with- 
out having given an alann. Another such brave man 
was Ensign (leorge E. Wing, who commanded the 
powder division on the Northern vessel Metacomet 
while it was passing Fort Morgan in Farragut's fleet 
at the battle of Mobile Bay. A shell from the fort 
entered a storeroom and burst among the paints and 
oil and turpentine. Wing and his men rushed into the 
room with wet blankets and hammocks to put out the 
fire. The ship was doomed if the fire continued. 
Finally Wing called out to those above: 



166 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

" Batten down the liatclies and let us fight it out." 
These men in this small storeroom were shut in 
with the flames and smoke all around them. They 
fought like heroes, and after a few minutes, during 
which they were burned badly, they came out ^vith 
their clothes scorched and their faces and hands black- 
ened with smoke. They had saved the ship. 

It was during the same battle in Mobile Bay that 
George Taylor, an armorer, on the Northern vessel 
Lackawanna, showed great bravery. A shell had ex- 
ploded in the Lackawanna's shellroom. Taylor, who 
was wounded, knew that in a few seconds the ship 
would be blown to pieces if that fire was not put out, 
and without any show of fear he coolly walked into 
the place and smothered the flames with his hands. 
Another hero, who was as fearless as Taylor, was First 
Assistant-Engineer James M. Hobby, of the small 
Northern vessel Sassacus, when the Sassacus was dis- 
abled by the Albemarle in their fight in 1864. The 
Sassacus was put out of action, and was drifting w^ith 
the current. One of her boilers had been pierced, and 
there was danger that the other boilers would burst 
at once. Hobby called on his men to follow him into 
the fireroom and draw the fires. Quickly the men 
went with him, but Hobby worked harder than any of 
them and saved the ship. When he was brought back 
to the deck he was blind and helpless. Later he re- 
covered his sight partly. 



BRAVERY IN THE NAVY IN THE CIVIL WAR. 167 

One of the greatest cases of heroism shown below 
deck during the war was that of John Davis, a native 
of Finland, who was in the I^orthern navy. He was 
a gunner's mate on board the steamer Valley City. 
At the fight off Elizabeth City, K C, in 18G2, one 
of the shells from a Southern vessel entered the maga- 
zine of the Valley City and exploded, setting fire to 
some Avoodwork. There was an open barrel of gun- 
powder standing near the fire. Davis had been serv- 
ing out the powder from the barrel, and knew that if 
a spark reached it the ship would be blown to bits. 
He at once sat down in the mouth of the barrel, and 
remained there until the fire was put out. For this 
brave act Davis was rewarded by being promoted to 
the place of acting gunner, and by receiving the first 
medal of honor ever given by Congress to enlisted 
men in the navy for bravery. Some citizens of ^N'ew 
York raised a purse of more than one thousand dollars 
and gave it to him. Although David Xaylor, a pow- 
der boy of one of the large guns on the Oneida in 
Farragut's fleet at Mobile, did not have a chance to sit 
down in a barrel of poAvder and save his ship, like 
Davis, he showed that he was made of the same kind 
of stuff. He was running along the deck of the 
Oneida when a shell from Fort Morgan knocked his 
powder box out of his hands and sent it overboard. 
N^aylor jumped overboard at once after his box, soon 
recovered it, clambered up the ship, and went running 



168 <^UR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

about his work again as if nothing had happened. If 
he did not save his ship, he saved at least something 
that was very necessary to one of the big guns of the 
vessel. 

Sometimes it is very hard to make men who have 
been wounded leave their posts during a fight. One 
of these cases occurred on the Brooklyn, in Farragut's 
fleet, while passing Forts Jackson and St. Philip. 
Quartermaster James Buck was wounded badly while 
standing at the wheel of the ship. He refused to take 
notice of his wound and for seven hours stood at his 
post without relief. One of the officers noticed that 
he was pale and found that he had been wounded. 
Buck even then refused to leave his place until com- 
manded to do so by the officer. Early the next morn- 
ing while no one was looking he stole to his station 
on the ship and steered the vessel from daylight until 
1.30 o'clock in the afternoon. Captain Craven at 
that time found what he was doing and sent him back 
under the surgeon's care. 

Devotion to duty was seen in the cases of many 
brave men found dead at their posts. One of these 
men was Chief-Engineer John Faron, of the monitor 
Tecumseh, which was sunk by torpedoes at the battle 
of Mobile Bay. Faron had been very sick, but in- 
sisted on leaving his bed to take his place in the engine 
room of his vessel. The night before the fight began 
he had received a letter from his wife, When the 



BRAVERY IN THE NAVY IN THE CIVIL WAR. 169 

divers found his body lie stood with one hand upon a 
piece of machinery and in the other he held the letter 
from his wife, which he seemed to have been reading 
as he was drowned. He made no attempt to stir from 
his post when death came. Of course the most noted 
case of courage and of absence of fear on that ship 
when she sank was that of Captain Craven, who sent 
the pilot up the ladder ahead of himself and lost his 
own life. 

There were many cases where men were exposed 
to almost certain death and yet went about their work 
as if it were nothing unusual. One of these men was 
Thomas Tlollins, who stood out on the deck of the 
Brooklyn, casting the lead as the ship went by Fort 
St. Philip. Shot and shell raged all about him, but 
every few minutes his voice was heard shouting out 
the depth of water. When opposite the fort the 
Brooklyn was so close to the cannon of the enemy that 
the faces of the men on the Brooklyn were almost 
scorched by the blasts from the fort. Hollins stood 
at his post without flinching, and at the very worst 
part of the fight called out that the ship had thirteen 
feet of water to spare. Another man who did not 
flinch when death seemed certain was Ensign Henry 
C. ^N'eilds at the battle of Mobile Bay. When the 
Tecumseh went down he manned a small boat and put 
out in the rain of shot and shell to save as many 
drowning men as he could. He forgot in his hurry 



170 OUR NAVY IN TIME OP WAR. 

to hoist a small flag on his boat, and was in danger 
of being shot to pieces by the gunners of the E'orthern 
fleet as well as by those of the Southern fort. Some 
one called to him to raise his flag. He stood up in his 
boat, fixed the flag, and then sat down as the bullets 
were flying all about him. It was a gallant act and 
General Page, the commander of the Southern fort, 
who saw the deed, said to his men: 

"Don't fire on that boat; she is saving drowning 
men." 

One of the large guns of the ram Tennessee was 
aimed at the little boat at the time, but when the 
gunners saw young Neilds raise the flag, they were so 
pleased with his bravery that they raised the muzzle of 
the gun and fired over him instead of at him. It was 
during this same fight at Mobile Bay that Farragut, 
when he had decided to finish up the ram Tennessee, 
asked Fleet-Surgeon Palmer to go in a small boat to 
all the monitors and tell them to attack the Tennessee. 
Bullets and shells were flying in every direction, but 
Palmer did as he was ordered and escaped with his 
life. Another man who showed unusual absence of 
fear during this Mobile fight was Commander Thomas 
H. Stevens, of the monitor Winnebago. He remained 
exposed on the deck of his ship, walking from one 
turret to the other during the entire contest. At one 
time when the fire was very hot he was cheered by 
the crew of another ship. He went to the side of his 



BRAVERY IN THE NAVY IN THE CIVIL WAR. 171 

vessel, took off his hat and bowed, and then went about 
his work. A case of bravery that won attention was 
that of the secretary to Admiral Farragut, Mr. Ga- 
baudan. In April, 1863, Farragut had just passed 
Port Hudson after a terrible fight. Only two of his 
vessels got by the earthworks on the river. Farragut 
wanted to send a message to some of his vessels below 
Port Hudson, and Mr. Gabaudan got into a small 
skiff, covered the boat with twigs, so as to make it 
look like a floating log, lay down inside the little craft, 
and drifted past the batteries in safety. 

Gunner William W. Carter showed great bravery 
in the harbor of Galveston, Texas, on November 7, 
1861. Lieutenant James E. Jouett had taken forty 
men in two boats, and had stolen into the harbor to 
destroy some Southern vessels there. His boats were 
discovered and the order was given to run away, but 
Carter, who was in one of the boats, made a dash at a 
Southern vessel called the Royal Yacht. The boat 
touched the vessel and he leaped aboard. Just then 
the small boat drifted away and there he was alone, 
fighting with sword and pistol against the entire 
Soutliern crew, until Jouett came to his help, and 
with his own sword cut his Avay to Carter's side, after 
Carter had been wounded. 

Mention might be made at great length of scores of 

these cases of bravery, but after all they tell only one 

story, and that is true love of country. Thousands 
18 



172 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

of men who had no chance to play the part of heroes 
would have shown themselves just as courageous as 
those who did win attention. The same credit is due 
to the men who stood beside their guns not knowing 
whether they would be killed as to those who offered 
to do and who did do heroic deeds that were to become 
known widely. 



CHAPTER X. 

QUEER BOATS USED IN THE CIVIL WAR. 

The war between the North and South caused 
many queer boats, such as had never before been seen 
in warfare, to be built and used before the four years' 
strife ended. The South had no navy to begin with, 
and could secure very little iron with which to build 
one. The North had had a navy, but its use chiefly 
was for fighting on the ocean, and not on rivers and 
shallow bays and sounds. The South built some iron- 
clads like the Merrimac, and the North had to build 
monitors to overmatch them. Both of these types of 
ships were new. The South also made use of some 
small vessels, not much larger than tugboats, but they 
were of little account in the fighting. In her naval 
warfare the South depended chiefly upon the many 
l-ams, like the Merrimac, that were built and at last 
lost, and also upon another queer kind of craft, such as 
had never before been used in war, called " Davids.^' 

The North's queer boats, in addition to the monitors, 

173 



QUEER BOATS USED IN THE CIVIL WAR. 175 

were known as " double-enders " and " tinclads." 
The double-enders and tinclads were used in the 
rivers and shallow waters, in which the ships of the 
North were compelled to fight so much. 

Of all the queer boats that were used on both sides 
during the war the Davids were the queerest. They 
w^ere really submarine boats. The idea was an old one, 
as old as the time of the Revolution, but no one had 
ever tried them with success in war. The first one of 
these boats used in the civil war was built at Charles- 
ton, by a man named Theodore D. Stoney. She was 
called David because she was supposed to be able to 
destroy a large war ship, as David in the Bible killed 
the giant Goliath. This boat was used first on October 
5, 1863, when an attempt was made, as has been told 
already, to blow up the IN^orth's great ironclad and first 
modern battle ship, the New Ironsides. The David 
was fifty-four feet long, and shaped like a cigar. 
Steam was used in her, and when she was ready to fight 
only the funnel and a little sighting tower appeared 
above the water. A torpedo on a spar was attached to 
the boat, and when the boat came near an enemy's 
ship the plan was to push this torpedo against the other 
ship and explode it. In the attack on the New Iron- 
sides the torpedo seemed to have been exploded be- 
fore it was placed against the side of the Northern 
vessel 

The David was under command of a man named 



176 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

W. T. Glassell. He had three men with him. A 
little after nine o'clock on the evening of October 5, 
1863, several officers on the New Ironsides saw what 
thej thought at first was a long plank floating near 
their ship. The object moved straight toward the 
ship, and the Northern officers knew that some kind of 
trouble was in store for them. They called out, and 
the reply to their hail was a rifle shot, which wounded 
one of the Northern officers. A moment later there 
was a great explosion under the water close beside the 
New Ironsides. The ship was lifted partly from the 
water and was shaken severely. One man on board 
had his leg broken. The strange boat that looked like 
a plank disappeared; her crew of four men had 
jumped overboard, and their boat floated away in 
the darkness. Glassell and another man swam to 
Northern vessels and were taken prisoners; the two 
remaining men swam back to the David, climbed into 
her, and in the night took the boat back to Charleston. 
That boat was never used again, and when the war was 
over was found, with eight others like her, in one of 
the small rivers near Charleston. 

The success of the first David led the Southern 
naval men to build another on the same general plan, 
but not so long, and able to contain a larger crew. 
This boat was only thirty-five feet long, but the crew 
consisted of nine men. Instead of using steam to make 
the boat go, eight of the crew worked the machinery 



QUEER BOATS USED IN THE CIVIL WAR. 177 

by hand; the other man steered the boat and exploded 
the torpedo. 

This boat was built in Mobile, and was brought 
overland to Charleston. She could be sunk to any 
depth, and could be made to go under water in any 
direction. Her speed was only about four knots an 
hour. The plan was to have the boat pass under an 
enemy's vessel, dragging a floating torpedo which was 
to explode when the torpedo struck the side of the 
enemy's ship. She was tried on the Northern vessel 
Housatonic on February 16, 1864, off Charleston har- 
bor. She sank the Housatonic, and all the men on the 
David were lost. Before that time, however, the 
David had had a career in which death played the 
chief part. Five times were most of the crew 
drowned. On the trial trip of the boat in Charleston 
harbor Lieutenant Payne took the vessel out with 
eight men. The wash of a passing steamer swamped 
the boat, and all but Payne were drowned. The boat 
was raised and taken to a wharf at Fort Sumter, where 
a second trial was held. The men did not know how 
to manage the vessel very well, and she sank, drown- 
ing six of the crew. Lieutenant Payne escaped 
again. The boat was raised again, and was taken 
up the Stono Kiver, near Charleston, where a man 
named Hundley, who was one of her builders, took 
charge of her. With a crew of eight men he made 
several successful dives, but finally the vessel poked 



178 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

her nose into the mud and could not be made to 
come to the surface. There was no reserve of air in 
the boat, and every man inside was suffocated. Again 
the David was raised, and again brave men offered to 
run the vessel. Many attempts were made to work the 
boat and they proved successful. Finally, while pass- 
ing under a ship called the Indian Chief, a cable 
fouled the David, and once more all the men inside 
were drowned. 

Again the David was ;:aised, and Lieutenant 
George E. Dixon asked permission to use her against 
the Housatonic. He had no trouble in getting a crew. 
In time of war brave men can always be found to face 
certain death. Permission was given to Dixon and 
his volunteers to try to sink the Housatonic, if they 
would not work the David under water, but would 
move along the surface. It was just before nine 
o'clock on the evening of February 17, 1864, when 
the David was discovered within one hundred yards of 
the Housatonic. She looked like a plank in the water, 
but the Northern officers had had experience with such 
a plank in the case of the 'Rew Ironsides, and an alarm 
was rung throughout the ship. The anchor was 
slipped and the Housatonic made to back, but before 
she went very far a great explosion occurred, and a 
large hole was made in the side of the vessel beneath 
the water. 

There was great confusion at once when it was seen 



QUEER BOATS USED IN THE CIVIL WAR. 179 

tliat the Housatonic was sinking. In four minutes 
the S23lendid sloop of war went down, and five of the 
crew and two officers were drowned. The others on 
the boat ran up the rigging and were rescued by 
boats from Northern vessels that were near. The 
David was not seen again, and it is said that two years 
afterward she was found about four hundred yards 
from the place where the Housatonic sank. The 
men who died in the David from the time her 
career began until it ended were as brave as any the 
war produced. They had the bravery of true Amer- 
icans. 

Although everybody was lost on the second David, 
it was not long before another attempt was made to 
destroy another j^orthern vessel by one of these boats. 
It was about one o'clock of the morning of March 6, 
1864, that the lookout on the steamer Memphis, which 
was in the ^N'orth Edisto River, near Charleston, saw 
a David approaching the vessel. An alarm was 
sounded at once, and all the crew hurried to their 
places. The David was so near the Memphis that the 
guns of the vessel could not be fired at her. Every man 
who could seize a rifle, revolver, or pistol, shot at the 
little craft, which stopped for a minute. Then the 
David started ahead again, but it was seen that she 
had broken down in some way and she drifted away 
from the Memphis, which after a time fired a cannon 
shot at her. She disappeared in the darkness, and, al- 



180 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

though an armed boat was sent out to try to capture 
her, she could not be found. 

About a month later, on April 9, 1864, an attempt 
was made by one of these little boats to blow up the 
steam frigate Minnesota, then lying off ^N^ewport 
Xews, at the mouth of the James River. There was a 
large fleet there. The captains of the Northern ves- 
sels, by this time, were on the watch for Davids, and 
kept small boats moving about the fleet constantly. 
The watch on the Minnesota at 1.45 a. m. saw a 
small boat adrift, about one hundred and fifty yards 
away. The tugboat Poppy was protecting the Min- 
nesota at the time, but was not on the same side of 
that vessel as the small torpedo boat. This torpedo 
boat was really not a David, because it coidd not go 
under the water; it was a launch which carried a tor- 
pedo on a spar. The oflEicer of the deck on the Min- 
nesota called to the little boat and asked what vessel 
she was. The reply came back that she was the 
Roanoke. The officer warned the little boat not to 
come near, and trained a cannon upon her. Some of 
the sentries fired at her also. Before the cannon could 
be fired a torpedo was exploded against the Minnesota, 
doing great damage to the ship, but not sinking her. 
Fifty-three pounds of powder were exploded against 
the vessel. 

On April 19th of the same year an attempt was 
made off Charleston harbor to destroy the steam frig- 



QUEER BOATS USED IN THE CIVIL WAR. 181 

ate Wabash by a David. The Nortlieni vessels were 
keeping such a good lookout by this time for these 
boats that the David was seen before she was very 
close. A furious alarm was sounded on the Wabash 
at once, the anchor was slipped, and the frigate, firing 
her broadside of guns and as many rifles as her crew 
could seize, ran off in the darkness at full speed. Here 
was a big vessel with a crew of several hundred men 
put to flight out on the ocean V)y a boat scarcely larger 
than a good-sized whaleboat, with only four men in 
her, and having for a weapon only a few pounds of 
powder on the end of a stick. These Davids, how- 
ever, led to the building of modern submarine boats, 
which at the present day seem almost perfected. 

The boats that the South depended most upon in 
fighting the ships of the Xorth were the rams which 
were built after the Merrimac was blown up, and 
which were made in general after the plan of that 
vessel. Next to the Merrimac, the Tennessee was 
the most famous of these, and, as has been told, did 
splendid fighting at the l)attle of Mobile Bay. The 
Tennessee fought the en^re TSTorthern fleet before she 
was beaten and captured. Another famous vessel of 
this class was the Albemarle, which, as w^as told in the 
chapter before this, was bloAvn up and destroyed by 
Gushing on the Roanoke Kiver. The ram Arkansas 
was another of these vessels which fought almost an 
entire l^orthern fleet. She was the one that was built 




Types of United States vessels used during the civil war. 
Third class. Soronfl class. First class. 



QUEER BOATS USED IN THE CIVIL WAR. 183 

at Yazoo, Miss., and which came down the Yazoo 
River on July 15, 1862, putting three Northern gun- 
boats to flight. She then passed through Farragut^s 
fleet, which was at anchor above Vicksburg, doing 
great damage, and anchored under the forts at Vicks- 
burg. Farragut tried to destroy her two days later 
as he passed down the river, but he did not succeed. 
It was on July 2 2d of that year that Commodore 
W. D. Porter decided to destroy the Arkansas. With 
four vessels he ran by the forts at Vicksburg and at- 
tacked the Arkansas. Porter had command of the Es- 
sex, and tried to run down the Arkansas. He saw 
that his own ship would probably be sunk and steered 
off, firing three solid nine-inch shot at the Arkansas, 
which was only fifty yards away. The shots killed 
eight men and wounded six others out of the forty- 
eight on the Arkansas. The Essex ran aground, 
but soon got out of the mud and went down the 
river. The Northern ram Queen of the West struck 
the Arkansas and injured her, but the Queen of the 
West was damaged more than the Arkansas, and 
Colonel Alfred E. Ellet was glad to escape up the 
river with his boat. The Arkansas was still in fight- 
ing condition. On August 3, 1862, she went down 
the Mississippi to attack the K'orthern fort at Baton 
Rouge. Her machinery broke down and she ran 
aground. When the Southern men on board saw the 
Essex, which Commodore Porter commanded, coming 



184 OUR NAVY IN TIME OP WAR. 

near the Arkansas, they blew her up, and that was the 
end of that ram. 

Another famous ram on the Mississippi was the 
Manassas. She was the vessel which caused so much 
trouble to Farragut's fleet as it was passing the forts 
below Kew Orleans. The Brooklyn had a fierce fight 
with the Manassas, and after the Brooklyn had passed 
up the stream the Manassas tried to follow the North- 
ern fleet and sink some of them. The Captain of the 
Northern vessel Mississippi saw her and turned to 
fight her. The Manassas started to run away, and be- 
came fast in the mud. Her crew saw there was 
no chance for them, and they leaped into the water 
and swam ashore. The Mississippi fired two broad- 
sides into her and blew her loose from the mud. 
She floated down the river in flames, and a short 
distance below the forts exploded and was destroyed. 
She was the vessel that a few months before had put 
a Northern squadron to flight at the mouths of the 
Mississippi. 

Another ram that caused the fleet under Farra- 
gut some alal*m at the battle of New Orleans was 
the Louisiana. She was the most heavily armed 
of all the Southern rams. She was not quite fin- 
ished when Farragut went up the river. Her en- 
gines were never used, but her guns were in good 
shape, and she was towed to a place near the 
forts below New Orleans where she could fight the 



QUE::rt boats used in the civil war. 185 

Xortlierii s]iii)s as they passed up. She did good 
work with her gims. The two forts on the river were 
surrendered on April 28, 1862. The South meant 
that the Louisiana should not fall into Northern 
hands, and while plans were being made for the sur- 
render the Louisiana was set on fire at the place 
where she was moored. The fire soon burned the 
ropes that held her fast, and she drifted down the river 
in flames. She was fast approaching some Northern 
ships, to which she would probably have set fire, when 
she blew up. She was opposite Fort St. Philip at the 
time, and her guns, which had been left loaded, were 
set off, killing a Southern soldier in the fort and near- 
ly killing Captain Mcintosh, her former commander, 
who was dying at the time of a mortal wound. 

When Farragut reached New Orleans above the 
forts he found many vessels there which he destroyed. 
Among them was the ram Mississippi, which the 
Southern men had said would be " the greatest vessel 
in the world." She was two hundred and seventy feet 
long, fifty-eight feet wide, could carry sixteen guns, 
and was planned to go at the rate of eleven knots an 
hour. She cost two million dollars. She had been 
launched only six days when Farragut came up the 
river. Had he delayed his attack on the two forts 
below the city for a few weeks, the Mississippi would 
probably have done great damage to his fleet. He 
arrived at New Orleans just at the right time to catch 



186 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

the ram. In the great confusion the Southern naval 
men forgot to tow her up the river into the Yazoo 
Valley where the Arkansas was finished, and where 
the Mississippi might have been completed for future 
work against the ISTorthern ships. 

Another ram on the Mississippi that caused the 
Northern vessels serious trouble was the Tennessee, 
which took part in the battle of Memphis. She was a 
sister ship to the Arkansas, and both fought on the 
Southern side in that battle. Both were nearly cap- 
tured at the time, but the Arkansas escaped and went 
up the Yazoo River, from which she came down, as 
has been told, and passed through Farragut's fleet. 
The Tennessee, to avoid capture at the battle of Mem- 
phis, was burned. After 1863 the Northern ships had 
no more trouble from these rams on the Mississippi. 

Along the Atlantic coast the Northern vessels still 
had to meet these rams. The attack of the Chicora 
and Palmetto State, which were built after the plan 
of the Merrimac, on the vessels of the ^N'orthern fleet 
off Charleston in the fog has already been told. There 
were two other of these rams at Charleston, the 
Charleston and Columbia. These seem not to have 
been used by the South in fighting around Charleston. 
When the city was given up to the Northern soldiers 
in 1865, all four of these rams were found sunk and 
partly destroyed. 

The career of the ram Atlanta, which was cap- 




14 



188 OUR NAVY IN TIME OP WAR. 

tured at the mouth of Wassaw Sound by the monitor 
Weehawken, when two boatloads of people came 
down from Savannah to see the fight, has already been 
described in part. The Atlanta was the only one of 
the Southern rams that saw service in the Northern 
navy. After she was captured she was on guard with 
other Northern ships at the mouth of the James River, 
when, on January 23, 1865, three Southern rams, the 
Fredericksburg, Richmond, and Virginia No. 2, 
which had been built up the James, came down the 
river. The Virginia and the Richmond ran aground, 
but floated off and all went back up the river. There 
was no more trouble with that group of vessels. 

In addition to the Albemarle, destroyed by Gush- 
ing, the South built two more rams on the North Caro- 
lina sounds. One of these was the North Carolina 
and the other was the Raleigh. On the night of May 
17, 1864, the North Carolina came out of New Inlet, 
and fired several shots at five small vessels of the North 
on blockade duty. The shots did little damage, and 
the North Carolina went back up the stream and never 
came down again. After the war was over she and the 
Raleigh were found wrecked a short distance below 
Wilmington. 

The only ram the South owned that was not built 
there and that saw service was one called the Stone- 
wall. She was one of six vessels built for the South in 
France, and was also the only one of the group to 



QUEER BOATS USED IN THE CIVIL WAR. 189 

leave that country. She went to Ferrol, Spain, in 
March, 1865, where the N'orthern vessels Niagara and 
Sacramento found her. The Stonewall was very 
heavily armed, and Commodore Craven, who was in 
charge of the Northern vessels, decided not to fight 
her because he thought his vessels would be lost. He 
therefore let the Stonewall leave the harbor. She 
went at once to Lisbon and after that to Havana, 
where she was when the war ended. Spain gave her 
up to the United States, and she was sold afterward 
to Japan. She saw no fighting in the war. 

Early in 1862 the North saw that if it would 
cope with the Southern troops along the Mississippi 
and its branches, it must have a new kind of vessel, 
to go up the shallow streams and engage with soldiers 
along the banks. This kind of fighting was sometimes 
called " bushwhacking." Riflemen and sharpshooters 
would be hidden in the brush and grass along the small 
rivers to pick off men on Northern vessels that might 
be passing. It was necessary, therefore, to build a 
fleet of what were called tinclads. They were small 
steamers with stern wheels and covered all around to a 
height of eleven feet with sheet iron, from one half to 
three quarters of an inch thick. Ordinary bullets 
could not pierce this iron. The boilers had an extra 
plating of iron. The boats drew three feet of water 
but sometimes only twenty inches. They could carry 
about one hundred and fifty men as a crew. They 



190 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

generally had eight small guns. They couldn't fight 
against forts very well or against large ships, but they 
could fight with light artillery and infantry on a river 
bank, and they showed their value many times in the 
rivers, fighting along the branches of the Mississippi. 
One of these occasions was on January 9 and 10, 
1863, when the nine tinclads in Porter's fleet, with 
three strong vessels to help them, went fifty miles up 
the Arkansas River to assist the army in taking Ar- 
kansas Post. The tinclads fought furiously, and it 
was not long before the seventeen guns in the fort 
were put out of action. The fort was forced to give 
up before the army could get into position to attack it. 
Another class of boats that the North built, and 
that became well known, was the kind known as double- 
enders. These were used in narrow rivers and chan- 
nels, chiefly along the Atlantic coast. They were 
very small boats, and drew only a few feet of water. 
They were like ferryboats, in that they had a rudder 
at each end, and were unlike ferryboats in that each 
end had a sharp bow. These boats could go backward 
or forward, as the case might be, and they were of 
great use in the very small streams, because when they 
wanted to run away or make a quick advance they 
never had to turn around. Most of them carried eight 
small guns, and two or three had twelve guns. They 
w^ere all of about one thousand tons' weight, and after 
the war most of them were sold. Altogether th§ 



QUEER BOATS USED IN THE CIVIL WAR. 191 

I^orth built forty-seven of tliese double-enders during 
the war. They did good work in the North Carolina 
sounds and along the coast. Among them were the 
Metacomet, Sassacus, Wyalusing, Mattabesett, and 
others mentioned in tliese chapters. 

The one type of boats which appeared for the first 
time during the civil war, and which has lasted until 
the present day, was the type known as monitors. 
The great fight of the original Monitor against the 
Merrimac showed that the right idea had been used in 
building her, and the North hurried to build some 
more. It was plain that the old wooden fighting ship 
was doomed. Nine of these monitors, all alike and a 
little larger than the original Monitor, were built first. 
These were the monitors which took a leading part in 
the fighting in and about Charleston harbor. Then 
there were built what were called light-draught moni- 
tors. It was intended to use these against Fort Fisher 
and on the small rivers of the South. A mistake was 
made in their plans, so that they did not float in the 
water at the proper height. Most of them were broken 
up at the end of the war. Before the fighting was 
over the North had built thirteen monitors with 
double turrets, and these are the type of the strictly 
strongest fighting vessels of to-day. They lie low in 
the water, have a very thick turret and armor, and for 
mere fighting naval experts have said they are the best 
kind of vessel. 



192 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

The North built more than forty monitors of vari- 
ous sizes during the war. After the war was ended 
one of them, the Miantonomoh, was sent to England, 
to show that it was possible for that kind of vessel to 
cross the ocean. The Miantonomoh is still in the 
United States navy. Another of the monitors, the 
Monadnock, went around South America, from Kew 
York to San Francisco. While these boats are not 
fast, they are what is known as good sea boats, because 
they "do not roll and pitch as much as ordinary vessels 
do in storms at sea. The waves break over their flat 
decks and roll off quickly. If they could carry more 
coal there is little doubt that they could go anywhere 
and ride out any gale. 



CHAPTER XL 

VESSELS DESTliOYED BY TORPEDOES. 

Early in 1862 the South saw that probably the 
only way it could overcome the Northern navy would 
be to destroy the ships by torpedoes. The effort of the 
South to build a navy did not have the result that was 
desired. The ships of the North could sail into the 
rivers and bays of the South, and could blockade the 
coasts without fear of meeting Southern ships of a 
similar size. Aside from the rams of the South, the 
other vessels which were made into war ships really 
amounted to very little. There was only one thing to 
do in order to keep the Northern ships away from the 
forts on the ocean front or up the rivers, and that was 
to use some means of destroying them. 

Up to the time of the civil war torpedoes had not 

been used much. The Russians had planted them in 

,nd near the Black Sea in the Crimean War, but no 

ships were destroyed. Most of the naval officers in the 

ITnited States navy at that time believed that the use 

of torpedoes was inhuman and unchristian. When 

the South first began to sprinkle its bavs and rivers 

193 



194 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

with tliem in 1862 it was done in secret, and some of 
the men engaged in it felt that perhaps it was a wrong 
kind of warfare. However, there was nothing else to 
be done, and in October, 1862, a secret service was 
formed for this work alone. Soon after that the ^N^orth 
began to have great difficulty in its naval work along 
the coast. When the great battles of Hatteras, Port 
Royal, and New Orleans were fought, the Northern 
vessels met no torpedoes, while later, at the fights at 
Wilmington, Charleston, and Mobile, torpedoes were 
found in large numbers and they did great damage to 
Northern ships. Altogether, seven monitors and 
eleven wooden vessels of the North were destroyed by 
these torpedoes. All the cannon in the Southern forts 
from the beginning to the end of the war did not do so 
much damage to the ships of the North as the tor- 
pedoes did. 

Torpedoes in the civil war were found first on 
February 18, 1862, in the Savannah River above Fort 
Pulaski. They were water-tight tin cases, filled with 
powder, and were stretched across the river at regular 
intervals, the cable to which they were attached being 
fastened below the water on each bank. An anchor 
held the torpedoes, so that at high tide they were not 
to be seen, but at low tide they floated on the surface 
of the water. An electric wire ran to them, in order 
to explode them. The Northern ships saw these tor- 
pedoes at low tide and gathered up some of them. No 



VESSELS DESTROYED BY TORPEDOES. I95 

damage came to the boats from them. Hundreds of 
torpedoes like these were soon found in small rivers 
and bays, but they did almost no damage to N^orthern 
ships. 

During the winter of 18 62-' 6 3 the secret service 
bureau of the South, which had charge of the torpedo 
warfare, planned three kinds of these weapons; they 
were the frame torpedoes, the floating torpedoes, and 
the electric torpedoes. The frame torpedoes were gen- 
erally made by placing large caps containing gunpow- 
der on a wooden frame, which was fastened at one end 
to a dock or some piling. The other end of the frame 
would rise and fall with the water, and a ship running 
across the frame would strike the torpedoes, explode 
them, and be blown up itself. These torpedoes could 
be used only in shallow streams, but scores of them 
were found in the small rivers about Charleston. Xo 
ship ever got past one of these sets. Two years after 
the war, the United States gunboat Jonquil was nearly 
destroyed at Charleston while removing one of these 
frames. 

The floating torpedoes were made from beer kegs 
chiefly. Some were also made of tin, and both kinds 
were set off when a boat struck the firing caps that 
stuck out from the torpedoes in several places. These 
floating torpedoes contained from seventy to one hun- 
dred and twenty pounds of powder, and they were the 
most dangerous and the cheapest used in the war. 




PRONeCD TORPEDO. 

MAV 

RASS ONE WAY SAFtUV 



Torpedoes used by the South. 



VESSELS DESTROYED BY TORPEDOES. 197 

Two Southern steamers, the Marion and Ettiwan, were 
blown up by accident in Charleston harbor while put- 
ting them down. Another Southern boat, called the 
Schultz, was destroyed by one on the James Kiver 
while under a flag of truce, several Southern prisoners 
who had been received from the North in exchange 
being killed. 

The electric torpedoes were generally very large, 
and were planted in the mud over which Northern 
ships would have to pass to attack a fort. Some of 
these torpedoes contained as much as two thousand 
pounds of gunpowder. They were blown up by elec- 
tricity from a distance. They were the beginning of 
the harbor mine as it is known to-day. 

Then there were other kinds of small torpedoes, 
the chief of which were the clockwork and the coal 
torpedoes. The clockwork torpedo was simply a small 
box containing gunpowder, with some clockwork in- 
side, which at the end of a given time set off the box. 
This kind of torpedo was used to blow up storehouses 
and magazines. At City Point, on the James River, 
in 1864, a man who was supposed to be an ordinary 
laborer carried one of these clockwork torpedoes on 
board a Northern barge loaded with powder. Soon 
the torpedo exploded, and the barge, the wharves, 
several storehouses, and vessels were destroyed, and 
a number of men killed. The coal torpedo was a 
block of cast iron, in the shape of a lump of steam- 



198 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

boat coal. It contained about ten pounds of powder, 
and on the outside there was a mixture of tar and coal 
dust, so that it was impossible to tell a torpedo by 
sight from a large chunk of coal. These coal tor- 
pedoes were hidden by spies in the coal heaps from 
which J^orthern vessels were supplied. When they 
were thrown into the fire, of course they exploded. 
The Northern steamer Greyhound, one of the finest 
vessels on the James River, was blown up by one of 
the coal torpedoes while General Butler and Admiral 
Porter were on board. They and the crew of the ship 
escaped with some difficulty to the shore. 

It was on December 12, 1862, that the first North- 
ern vessel was lost through torpedoes. Captain Walke 
had been sent up the Yazoo River with the ironclad 
Cairo, one of the strongest of the Northern vessels 
on the Mississippi, and four small boats to attack the 
Southern navy yard at Yazoo, and destroy the ves- 
sels there. About sixteen miles from the mouth of 
the river floating torpedoes were seen, and the gun- 
boat Marmora began to shoot at them. The com- 
mander of the Cairo hurried to the Marmora with his 
ship, but before he reached the other vessel two ex- 
plosions were felt beneath the Cairo, and in twelve 
minutes she sank out of sight, except the tops of her 
smokestacks. Although half a dozen men were hurt, 
no one was drowned. 

Another ironclad of great strength was lost in the 



VESSELS DESTROYED BY TORPEDOES. 199 

Yazoo River through torpedoes on July 22, 1863. 
She was the De Kalb. She was going up the river to 
assist in an attack on Yazoo City, and was badly dam- 
aged by a floating torpedo which did not come to the 
surface of the water and could not be seen. She sank 
in fifteen minutes. Many of her crew were hurt, but 
no one was killed. The vessel was completely 
wrecked, and although an attempt was made to raise 
her it came to nothing. A fate like that of the De 
Kalb came to the ironclad Eastport on the Red River 
during the famous Red River expedition by the army 
and the navy. When the ships were coming back, 
after the army had been beaten along the river, the 
Eastport struck a small floating torpedo and went to 
the bottom, no lives being lost. 

It was along the Atlantic coast that the greatest 
damage was done to Northern ships by these vessels. 
The first Northern boat injured on the James River 
was the Commodore Barney, on August 8, 1863. 
General Foster went up the river on the Barney to 
within a few miles of Drewry's Bluff. On coming 
back, an electric torpedo was exploded just after the 
Barney had passed over it. A great waterspout was 
thrown up and twenty of the crew were washed over- 
board. Several of them were drowned. The Barney 
was damaged severely, but was repaired afterward. 

On May 4, 1864, an expedition of the army and 
navy went up the James River to seize City Point and 



200 C>UR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

Bermuda Hundred. General Grant and his army 
were in that neighborhood, and the James River ex- 
pedition was intended to help him. There were eight or 
ten gunboats in the fleet that went up the river. It 
was necessary to go very slowly, because a company of 
sailors had to march along the southern bank of the 
river to search for wires that were used in exploding 
torpedoes in the stream. The fleet reached a sharp 
bend in the river at a place called Deep Bottom. A 
negro went aboard one of the ships at this place, and 
gave the news that there were a large number of tor- 
pedoes in the river at that place. 

A gunboat named the Commodore Jones was in 
the lead of the fleet, and had small boats out in front 
and behind searching for torpedoes. The men on the 
river bank could find no wires. An order was sig- 
naled to the Jones to back because she was in danger, 
and just as her wheels began to turn a great explosion 
occurred. It seemed as if the bottom of the river was 
torn up and blown through the vessel itself. The 
Jones was lifted almost entirely clear of the water, 
and she burst in the air like an exploding firecracker. 
She was in small pieces Avhen she struck the water 
again, ^o one knew exactly how many were killed, 
but it was estimated that not less than forty officers 
and men lost their lives. One of the strangest escapes 
was that of an engineer who was working at the ma- 
chinery. He was in the bottom of the boat, and was 



VESSELS DESTROYED BY TORPEDOES. 201 

blown up with that part of the vessel, but landed in 
the water without serious injury. 

Three men were seen to run from some bushes 
on the northern bank of the river as soon as the ex- 
plosion occurred. Thej were the men who had set 
off the mine. One of them was shot dead and the 
others were captured. The night before the fleet 
reached Deep Bottom, knowing that the IS^orthern 
sailors were scouring the southern bank of the stream 
for mines, the three men had taken the wires across to 
the other bank, where they could work without being 
seen. During the months of May and June large 
numbers of floating torpedoes were sent down the 
James River to destroy the Northern ships, but they 
were all caught before they reached the vessels. 

A small fleet of wooden vessels started up the 
Roanoke River, in North Carolina, on December 9, 
1864, to go to a place called Rainbow Bluff. It was 
known that there were torpedoes in the river, and the 
vessels moved with great caution. The fleet had not 
gone far, however, before one of the gunboats, the 
Otsego, a double-ender, was blown up and several of 
her crew killed. The other vessels of the fleet hurried 
to the assistance of the Otsego, and just as one of them, 
called the Bazeley, reached the Otsego's side, she was 
also blown up and destroyed. The expedition at once 
retired. 

On January 15, 1865, there occurred one of the 



202 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

great disasters to the navy tlirough the explosion of a 
war ship by a torpedo. The monitor Patapsco, which 
had been on duty off Charleston, S. C, for a long 
time, and which had taken part in the heavy fight- 
ing there, was passing between Forts Sumter and 
Moultrie on picket duty. A muffled roar was heard, 
the ship lurched heavily, and began to sink. She 
went down almost immediately. Every one on board 
who was not on deck or near the companion ways to 
the decks was lost. Only forty-three officers and men 
were saved, and sixty-two officers and men were killed 
or drowned. Every care had been taken against such 
an: accident. Small boats had searched the very place 
\yhere the Patapsco was sunk, and several large ves- 
sels had passed over the spot. The Southern officers in 
Charleston had watched the course that the Patapsco 
^hd other vessels took in their nightly picket duty, 
and in the darkness of the night before the explosion 
had placed a torpedo in the path that the Patapsco 
would take. The torpedo was set off by electricity 
the moment the Patapsco was over it. 
• After Fort Fisher had been taken. Admiral Por- 
ter's fleet went up the Cape Fear River to help cap- 
ture Wilmington, N. C. The river was full of tor- 
pedoes, but good fortune followed the work of Porter's 
men in finding them and exploding them. Just before 
the vessels of the fleet reached Wilmington more than 
twb ^hundred floating torpedoes were sent down the 



204 OUR NAVY TN TIME OF WAR. 

river against the vessels. Picket boats in advance of 
the fleet sent up a signal, and all tlie small boats of the 
ships were sent out in a hurry to gather up the tor- 
pedoes as they came down. It was dangerous work. 
Most of the torpedoes were guided clear of the vessels 
and were exploded by shooting into them. One of the 
small boats engaged in the work was destroyed and 
four men were killed and wounded. Fish nets were 
spread across the river the next day, and there was 
no more trouble from the floating torpedoes. 

On March 1, 1865, Admiral Dahlgren set out early 
in the morning with his flagship, the Harvest Moon, 
from Georgetown, S. C, to go to Charleston harbor. 
He had not gone more than three miles below the 
city when an explosion like that of the bursting of 
a boiler was heard. There was great confusion at 
once, and in a few moments the Harvest Moon was 
on the bottom. Only one life was lost in this disaster. 

Although the war was nearly over, the most seri- 
ous losses to the navy through torpedoes, so far as the 
number of vessels was concerned, were yet to occur. 
Within two weeks, in the harbor of Mobile, no less 
than five war ships, two of which were double-turreted 
monitors, and one launch were destroyed. The first 
of these vessels to be lost was the monitor Milwaukee. 
With the monitor Winnebago she had been up Dog 
River on March 28, 1865, to shell a place called Span- 
ish Fort. On the way back to the fleet in the harbor 



VESSELS DESTROYED BY TORPEDOES. 205 

a torpedo was blown up under the Milwaukee, and 
the stern of the monitor sank in three minutes. The 
bow remained above the water for nearly an hour and 
all on board escaped. On the next day the water was 
rough in the bay, and the monitor Winnebago dragged 
her anchor. She was in danger of collision with the 
monitor Osage, and the Osage, to avoid an accident, 
raised her anchor and started for a new berth. She 
had just reached a new anchorage when she struck a 
torpedo and sank almost at once. None of the crew^ 
was drowned, but five were killed and eleven wounded 
by the explosion. 

Two days after this the Northern vessel Rodolph 
was sent toward the sunken monitor Milwaukee with 
some machinery that was to be used in trying to raise 
that vessel. The Rodolph was passing between the 
monitors Chickasaw and Winnebago when she was 
blown up by a torpedo that made a hole in the bottom 
underneath the bow ten feet in diameter. In a few 
minutes the Rodolph was on the bottom of the harbor. 
Four men were killed and eleven wounded. On 
April 14th, twelve days later, the small gunboat 
Scioto, while going from one vessel of the fleet to an- 
other, ran against a torpedo which was below the sur- 
face of the water. The torpedo exploded, and the bot- 
tom of the vessel was torn out for several feet. Four 
men were killed and six were wounded. 

The tugboats Ida and Althea, with a launch of the 




^-f r 







VESSELS DESTROYED BY TORPEDOES. 207 

Cincinnati, were engaged dnring the first part of April, 
1865, with other small vessels in searching the harbor 
of Mobile for these torpedoes, which were doing great 
damage to the fleet. On April 12th the Althea, while 
draaiiino; the channel with a chain attached to some 
spars, struck a torpedo and went down at once, two 
men being killed and two wounded. The next day 
the tugboat Ida, while engaged in similar work, also 
ran afoul of a torpedo. In the explosion the boilers 
of the Ida were blown up and she went down. The 
launch of the Cincinnati was destroyed on the same 
day while hunting for torpedoes. 

Of course the most serious disaster to the Northern 
fleet in the work in and around Mobile Bay was the 
loss of the monitor Tecumseh when the fleet was pass- 
ing Fort Morgan during the great battle there. An 
account of this disaster was given in the chapter de- 
scribing this flght. After Fort Morgan had sur- 
rendered, men from the Northern fleet were sent to 
remove the line of torpedoes which had been stretched 
across the mouth of the harbor, and one of which had 
sunk the Tecumseh. While engaged in this work 
five men were killed and eleven wounded by the ex- 
plosion of a torpedo which was not handled with proper 
care. 

The war was now over, practically, and with the 
loss of so many vessels in Mobile Bay in the latter part 
of March and the first part of April, 1865, torpedo 



208 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

Avarfare really ended. It showed that in time of war 
a weak nation that is attacked must rely on torpedoes 
for safety from the navy of an enemy. It also showed 
that in the future torpedoes were to have a prominent 
part in warfare. Still many of the officers of the navy 
did not like them. Among these officers was the great 
Farragut, who once said in a report to the Secretary 
of the Navy that he had always thought the use of 
torpedoes was unworthy of a great nation, and that 
he had adopted them only because he was compelled 
to do so. That same reason accounts largely for their 
use the world over for protecting harbors at the pres- 
ent day. 



CHAPTER XIL 

THE GREAT BLOCKADE ALABAMA AND KEAESARGE 

FIGHT. 

Some of the most exciting events of the civil war 
in which the navy took part occurred as the result of 
the great blockade of the south Atlantic and Gulf 
coasts. It was on April 19, 1861, that President Lin- 
coln proclaimed a blockade of the Atlantic, from 
South Carolina to the lower end of Florida. At that 
time the I^orth had only three steamers which it couM 
use in blockading this coast. On April 30th, the 
States of Virginia and ^North Carolina having left the 
Union, President Lincoln extended the blockade 
northward from South Carolina to the Chesapeake 
Bay. It is a rule in war that if a blockade is set 
up it must really do the work of a blockade, or other 
nations are not bound to respect it. It was a great 
task that the President set for the navy to do. E^oth- 
ing like it had ever been known. 

The distance along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts 

from the Chesapeake Bay to the northern boundary 

of Mexico was 3,549 miles. If the outlines of 

209 



THE GREAT BLOCKADE. 211 

the bays and sounds and harbors were followed, 
the distance was 6,789 miles. There were 185 river 
and harbor openings to be watched. Month by month 
the force of vessels engaged in this work increased, 
until at the end of the war there were more than six 
hundred of them on blockade duty. Altogether 
1,504 prizes were taken by the vessels in this work 
during the war. Of these 1,504, 210 were steamers. 
More than 350 of the prizes were burned or sunk, and 
of this number 85 were steamers. The value of the 
vessels destroyed by the blockading fleet was about 
$32,000,000. 

Cut off from traffic at sea, and with no supplies 
except those of the farm for its own use, the South 
had to depend on vessels which were known as block- 
ade runners in order to sell its cotton in Europe and 
to receive in return necessaries, such as food, medi- 
cines, iron, and articles of manufacture that it did 
not possess. It was dangerous and exciting work 
to run the blockade, and during the years 1863-64 
it was very profitable for those engaged in it. The 
blockade runners started usually from St. Thomas, 
Havana, I^assau, or Bermuda. All of these places 
were within less than one thousand miles of the South- 
ern ports, and it is on record that in the month of 
June, 1863, no less than ninety-one sailing vessels left 
the port of IN'assau alone for various rivers and har- 
bors in the South. About one in four of the blockade 



212 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

runners was sure to be caught. At first these vessels 
were mostly sailing craft. In 1863, however, special 
steamers that were built in England began to engage 
in the trade. They were long and low, and were usu- 
ally painted grey. The smokestacks could be lowered, 
and the masts were really thin poles. Hard coal was 
burned in the furnaces, so as to make little smoke, and 
steam was discharged under water. Most of these ves- 
sels could go at the rate of seventeen knots an hour. 
They approached the coast at night, and lights, placed 




Typical blockade runner. 

in huts and other buildings, were used as ranges for 
them to creep into ports. 

Some of these blockade runners wxre very bold. 
"While the battle of Fort Fisher was going on, one of 
them joined the Northern fleet. She put some soft 
coal in her furnaces, and black smoke poured out of 
her funnels. The men in Porter's fleet thought she 
was one of their own ships and paid no attention to 
her. When no one was looking she sailed right into 
the Cape Fear River through the thick smoke of the 



THE GREAT BLOCKADE. 213 

battle and passed up to Wilmington safely. While 
Farragut was preparing to enter Mobile Bay one of 
these runners came up, and, noticing the preparations 
that were going on for battle, sailed through Farra- 
gut's fleet and disappeared inside the harbor. They 
were up to all sorts of tricks, and did not hesitate to 
take all kinds of chances. They displayed false lights 
and false flags, always gave a wrong name when they 
were hailed and asked who they were, and when they 
were captured always threw overboard papers and 
other documents that would reveal their real nature. 

Two or three trips would pay for the cost of any 
vessel, and some of these runners stole into port as 
many as twenty-five times. Before the war ended a 
pound of tea was worth two or three hundred dol- 
lars in Southern money in Wilmington, 'N. C, and 
other supplies were enormously expensive. Great 
Britain depended almost entirely upon the South 
for the cotton for its mills, and there was great dis- 
tress in England because the mills were shut down. 
No less than $10,000,000 was spent in England 
to keep people who had no work because of the 
war from starving. By bringing in food from Eng- 
lish and other ports, and by taking out cotton for 
English mills, the profits of the blockade runners 
were very high. One of them is known to have 
made more than $90,000 in one month. The wages 
of the captain was usually $5,000 a month. From 




u 



Admiral Farragut. 



Commodore Foote. 
Commodore Worden. 

Heroes of the War of the Rebellion 



Lieutenant Cushing. 
Commodore Porter. 



THE GREAT BLOCKADE. 215 

]\lar('li ], 1S(;4, to Jtinuary 1, 1865, for instance, the 
cotton that was shipped ont of tlie Sonth by these 
runners aniouiited in vahie to more than $5,000,000 
in gold. It is on record that in two months and a 
litth^ more, in the latter part of l.SOd, more than 
S, 000,000 pounds of meat, 1,500,000 pounds of lead, 
nearly 1^,000,000 pounds of salti)eter, nearly 550,000 
pairs of shoes, more than 300,000 i)airs of blankets, 
about 500,000 pounds of coffee, nearly 70,000 rifles, 
and nearly 2,700 packages of medicine were smuggled 
into the ports of Wihnington and Charleston alone. 
There were hundreds of vessels engaged in this work. 
Another chiss of vessels that a})peared upon the 
seas as the result of the blockade was what was known 
as privateers. These were vessels whose work it was to 
capture vessels of the Kortli and bring them into port 
as prizes. Privateers were so called because they were 
owned by private persons, but were sent out by the 
South, as they had been sent out by the United 
States in 1812, to destroy the commerce of the enemy. 
The first of these vessels permitted to sail by the South 
was the small ])ilot boat Savannah, which ran out from 
Charleston on June 2, 1861. She captured a prize off 
the coast of South Carolina in a day or two, and was 
captured herself soon afterward when she chased the 
Xorllicin man-of-war Perry, thinking that the Perry 
was a mei-chant vessel. The crew of the Savannah was 
taken to Xew York and put in prison, and for a time 



216 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

there was talk of treating them as pirates and of hang- 
ing them, but it was decided finally to treat them as 
prisoners of war, when it became known that the 
South would hang prisoners it held if the men cap- 
tured on privateers were hanged. 

One of the most interesting of the Southern priva- 
teers was the Jefferson Davis. She was a fine clipper 
ship, and captured nearly a dozen merchant vessels 
before she was wrecked on the coast of Florida while 
trying to enter the St. John's River. One of the ves- 
sels captured by the Jefferson Davis was the schooner 
S. J. Waring, bound from New York to Montevideo. 
The Waring was captured about a hundred and fifty 
miles from Sandy Hook. On board the Waring 
was a negro cook named William Tillman, who had 
escaped from slavery. He knew that if the Waring 
was taken to a Southern port he would become a slave 
again. Five men from the Davis had been placed 
upon the Waring as a prize crew. The negro cook 
waited until the vessel was Avithin fifty miles of 
Charleston, when he stole to the captain's cabin at 
night and killed three of the prize crew. Then he 
took charge of the Waring, and by following the coast 
brought the vessel in safety back to Xew York. 

There w^ere half a dozen other privateers that set 
out from Charleston, but the one that had the most 
exciting and unfortunate experience was the Petrel. 
She was so anxious to get a prize that almost as soon 



THE GREAT BLOCKADE. 



21'r 



as she got to sea she went on a long chase for the 
Northern frigate St. Lawrence. The men on the 
Petrel were so unused to the work that they did not 




The city of Rielimond in flames, seen from the James River, 

know, even when they were at close range, that the 
St. Lawrence was a war ship. The St. Lawrence 
allowed the Petrel to come very near, and to fire two 
guns across her bow as a signal to stop. The St. Law- 
rence kept right on, and finally the Petrel fired a 
shot straight at her. At once the St. Lawrence swung 
around and fired thr^e large guns at the Petrel. The 
privateer sank, and four men were drowned. The St. 
Lawrence saved the rest of the crew. 

The desire of the North to capture Southern priva- 



218 OUR NAVY IN TIME OP WAR. 

teers and men on these vessels soon extended to a 
plan to capture agents of tlie South who might be 
leaving the country for Europe. It was this that 
led to what is known as the " Trent affair." The 
South was sending two of its best-known citizens — 
James Mason, of Virginia, a former United States 
Senator, and John Slidell, of Louisiana, former 
United States minister to Mexico — to Europe with 
their secretaries to try to induce England and Erance 
to recognize the South as a republic. They ran out 
of Charleston harbor on October 12, 1861, on a block- 
ade runner, and in a few days reached Havana. There 
they engaged passage for England on the British 
steamer Trent. Captain Charles Wilkes, who was off 
the' port of Cienf uegos, Cuba, with the United States 
cruiser San Jacinto, heard that Messrs. Mason and 
Slidell were in Havana, and were about to sail on the 
Trent. He stopped the Trent in the old Bahama 
Channel while on the way to St. Thomas on Novem- 
ber 8, 1861. He sent a boat to the Trent and took 
Messrs. Mason, Sildell, and their secretaries prisoners, 
and then sailed for Boston. When the news became 
known throughout the North of the arrival of the San 
Jacinto with her prisoners there was great rejoicing, 
and even the Secretary of the Navy sent a telegram 
of congratulation to Captain Wilkes. The North lost 
its head completely for a time. The United States 
had gone to war with England in 1812 for almost 



THE GREAT BLOCKADE. 219 

the same reason as the capture of Messrs. Mason and 
SlidelL 

When the news reached England of what Captain 
Wilkes had done, there was a great outburst of public 
rage. England demanded at once that the prisoners 
should be released. There was a prospect of w^ar with 
England if this was not done. President Lincoln 
ordered the men to be set at liberty. The United 
States was clearly in the wrong in this matter. It 
resulted, really, in the admission by Great Britain — 
something that country had never admitted before — 
when she declared that it was Avrong to take men by 
force from ships flying the flag of another country, 
that the United States was right in the War of 1812. 

Another kind of boats that the South used to a 
great extent in the war was known as commerce de- 
stroyers. These boats were really war ships, and they 
went up and down the high seas capturing merchant 
vessels which carried the United States flag. They 
did great damage to American shipping, and practi- 
cally drove it from the ocean. The first of these ves- 
sels to attract attention was the Sumter. She stole out 
of the Mississippi River on June 18, 1861, and al- 
though she was chased by a Northern war ship block- 
ading one of the mouths of the Mississippi, she escaped 
and went cruising for two months in the West Indies. 
In one week she took eight prizes. She finallj^ put in 

to St. Pierre, Martinique, for coal and supplies on 
16 



220 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

November 9 th of that year. The ISTorthern war ship 
Iroquois arrived there five days later. The Iroquois 
waited outside the harbor for the Sumter to come out. 
On the night of November 23d Captain Semmes, of 
the Sumter, decided to make a dash for the ocean. 
Captain Pahner, of the Iroquois, received a signal 
from the shore that the Sumter had started and was 
going out on the southern side of the wide harbor. 
Captain Semmes saw the signal, and after he had run 
two miles on the southern side, suddenly turned, and 
in the darkness and in a heavy shower ran over to the 
northern side and escaped with ease. He went straight 
across the Atlantic, taking three prizes on his way, and 
arrived at Cadiz, Spain. Then he went to Gibraltar, 
where three Northern war ships found him. He could 
not escape this time, and sold his boat. In all he had 
taken eighteen prizes. 

The South had no more boats that it could use in 
this work, and began to buy or build vessels in Eng- 
land for this purpose. These vessels were fitted 
out as merchantmen, and were then taken to sea 
and were made into war ships by placing cannon and 
ammunition and Southern crews on board of them. 
The first of these cruisers was the Florida, built in 
Liverpool. She was taken to the Bahama Islands as a 
merchantman and there made into a war ship. The 
captain of the Florida sailed for Cuba, and then, his 
crew being reduced to three available men because of 



THE GREAT BLOCKADE. 221 

yellow fever on board, he started for Mobile. He came 
within sight of the port on September 4, 1862. Two 
Northern vessels were blockading the bay. With only 
one man on deck to steer, and the captain himself 
sick and sitting in a chair, the Florida raised the Brit- 
ish flag and steered straight for the entrance. The 
captains of the Northern vessels thought she was an 
English war ship and hailed her. No reply was given, 
and the Northern vessel Oneida, after firing across the 
bow of the Florida three times, fired a broadside at 
her, but did not hit her. The Florida could go four- 
teen knots an hour and the Oneida could go only 
seven, and therefore the Florida's captain, the fearless 
J ohn N. Maffitt, sailed into Mobile safely. 

On January 16, 1863, Maffitt ran through the 
Northern blockading squadron at Mobile again and 
escaped to sea. He went down toward Brazil, and in 
five months took fourteen prizes. One of the prizes, 
named the Clarence, he put in charge of Lieutenant 
C. W. Read. That vessel went off cruising by herself, 
and soon captured five prizes. The fifth of these 
prizes was a vessel called the Tacony. Read burned 
the Clarence, and took the Tacony for his vessel. Two 
weeks later he caught another vessel called the Archer. 
He at once burned the Tacony and used the Archer as 
his war ship. Then he did a bold thing. He ran 
into the harbor of Portland, Me., seized the revenue 
cutter Caleb Cushing, and stole out to sea again with 



222 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

her. He was captured the next day by several 
steamers that went out to search for him, and Read's 
career in destroying vessels on the high seas was 
over. 

The Florida, in the meantime, had sailed for 
France, where she remained six months. She then 




Southern steamer Florida, sunk at Hampton lloads. 

went to Bahia, Brazil, where she was found by the 
N^orthern sloop of war Wachusett. Although it is 
against the law of nations for one war ship to fight an- 
other in a neutral port, Captain Collins, of the Wa- 
chusett, was afraid that the Florida would escape, and 
he attacked the Florida in the harbor and captured 
her. He did a great wrong, and later he was ordered 
to take the vessel back to Bahia and leave her there. 
She sank, however, just as Collins was about to start 
Ij-pm Hampton Roads with his prize. Brazil had 
allowed the Southern cruiser Alabama to use her 
ports in which to hide and from which she would steal 



THE GREAT BLOCKADE. 223 

out to capture Nortliern vessels, but of course that 
did not excuse Collins's act. 

Another of these commerce destroyers that was 
huilt in England was the Rappahannock. She went 
from England to France, but the French, finding out 
what she really was, never allowed her to leave that 
country. Still another was the Georgia, which cruised 
in the Atlantic for a year, but which took only eight 
prizes in that time. She returned to England and 
was sold to a merchant. While on a peaceful cruise 
afterward she was captured by the Northern war ship 
i^iagara, and was held as a lawful prize. 

The cruiser Shenandoah was another vessel of this 
class that had a famous career. She sailed from Eng- 
land in October, 1864, and after being made into a 
war ship near the Madeira Islands, took a few prizes in 
the Atlantic and then sailed to Melbourne, Australia. 
She received a cargo of coal there, and enlisted forty- 
two men in her crew, and then sailed north straight 
to the Behring Sea, where there was a large fleet of 
E'orthern whalers. ' Altogether, she captured thirty- 
six prizes, and kept at her work until June 28, 1865, 
some time after the war ended. The news of the 
close of the war did not reach the vessel until that 
time. The Shenandoah then returned to Liverpool, 
where she was given up to the English authorities. 

The most famous of all the commerce destroyers 
that the South sent out was the Alabama, under com- 



224 



OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 



mand of Captain Semnies, wlio was in charge of the 
Sumter during that vessel's career. It was the Ala- 
bama which fought the famous battle with the Kear- 
sarge olf the harbor of Cherbourg, France, the only 
sea fight of the civil war between vessels nearly evenly 




Northern merchantman held up by the Southern commerce 
destroyer Alabama. 



matclied. The Alabaina left England in July, 1862, 
as a merchant vessel, but was made into a war ship in 
the Bahamas in August, and at once started out to 
find Northern ships. Captain Semmes was the most 
successful of all the captains engaged in this work. 
He would cruise in one region only about two months 
at a time and then would go far away, so that when 
news reached the North about him and a vessel would 
be sent to find him, he would be nowhere near the 



THE GREAT BLOCKADE. 225 

place where he was expected to be. He first went 
to the West Indies, where after taking some prizes 
he learned that the Southern forces at Galveston, 
Texas, needed some help. He arrived there on January 
11, 1863, a short time after the Northern vessels in 
that port had been destroyed or put to flight, and just 
after several more Northern vessels had been sent there 
to blockade the port once more. One of the lookouts 
on the Northern vessel Brooklyn saw what he thought 
was a bark about twelve miles off on the morning of 
January 11th. The Northern vessel Hatteras, which 
had been a Delaware River steamer, was sent out to 
capture the bark. The bark was really the Alabama. 
Semmes allowed the Hatteras to chase him for twenty 
miles. The captain of the Hatteras finally overtook 
him and asked the name of his ship. Semmes said it 
was the English war ship Petrel, and while the captain 
of the Hatteras was sending a small boat over to the 
Alabama, the latter swung around and opened fire on 
the Hatteras and sank her in a few minutes. Semmes 
saved the crew of the Hatteras and took them away 
with him to Jamaica. The other Northern vessels, 
hearing the firing at sea, went out to find the Hatteras, 
but she was gone. After cruising all night they 
finally discovered her masts sticking out of the water. 
Semmes then went cruising off the northern coast 
of Brazil for two months, where he took many prizes, 
ftud then he sailed for the Cape of Good Hope. The 



THE GREAT BLOCKADE. 227 

people there were very cordial to him, and made his 
stay in that region pleasant. From there he went out 
in the Indian Ocean, and took several prizes in the 
East Indies. He went clear to the China Sea, and then 
came back to the Cape of Good Hope, and finally 
arrived at Cherbourg, France, on June 11, 1864. 
During his long cruise Semmes took sixty-nine prizes, 
fifty-three of which he destroyed. He always took 
the flags of the vessels he captured and placed them in 
a big bag as trojDhies. That bag was lost when the 
Alabama was sunk by the Kearsarge on June 19, 
1864. 

The Kearsarge was lying off the town of Flushing, 
Holland, on Sunday, June 12, 1864, when her cap- 
tain, John A. Winslow, received a Paris telegram 
saying that the Alal^ama had arrived at Cherbourg. 
Winslow at once started for Cherbourg, and lay off 
the harbor waiting for the Alabama to come out. 
Semmes had never fought a war ship in his cruising, 
and it was said that he would not do so at that time, 
but Avould give up his ship to France. But Semmes 
had true American bravery, and he let it be known 
that he intended to fight when he got ready. Al- 
though the Kearsarge was only fifteen tons larger than 
the Alabama, she had a crew of 163 men to the Ala- 
bama's 149. She could throw 366 pounds of metal 
from her seven guns to the 328 pounds of the Ala- 
bama's eight guns. Her powder was in good condi- 



228 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

tion, while that of the Alabama was not, because it 
had been on board for nearly two years. Her crew 
was eager to fight, while the crew of the Alabama 
had been shipped more for the purpose of capturing 
prizes than of fighting. 

The advantage, therefore, although the ships were 
of about the same size, was with the Kearsarge. Win- 
slow, of the Kearsarge, about a year before had taken 
anchor chains and had strung them alongside his ves- 
sel at the water line. Then he planked them over 
and painted the wood so that the crude armor that the 
anchor chains made did not show. This method of 
using anchor chains had been tried before during the 
war, but Semmes said that if he had known the Kear- 
sarge was so protected he would not have fought her 
as an equal. Only two shots, however, hit the armor, 
and so the protection really amounted to very little. 

Day after day the Kearsarge sailed up and down 
off the harbor of Cherbourg, waiting for the Alabama. 
Sunday morning, June 19 th, was beautiful with sun- 
shine, and the Kearsarge was made snug and clean and 
her brass work was polished highly before the hour 
for religious services had come. It was exactly at 
10.20 o'clock, when the ship's bell was tolling for 
church, that the Alabama was seen coming out of 
the harbor. Captain WinsloAV stood with his prayer 
book in hand, and gave orders to clear for action. A 
French war ship escorted the Alabama three miles out 



THE GREAT BLOCKADE. 229 

of the harbor, so as to be sure that the fighting would 
take place on the ocean beyond the limit of French 
waters. An English yacht called the Deerhound also 
came out to see the fight. 

Winslow took the Kearsarge four miles farther out 
to sea and then turned around and waited for the Ala- 
bama. The Alabama began firing when she was 
eighteen hundred yards from the Kearsarge. She fired 
three broadsides before Captain Winslow replied. 
The vessels were then only nine hundred yards apart. 
Winslow sent word to his gunners to make every shot 
count. The two vessels began swinging about in a 
circle. Seven times they made a complete turn. The 
Alabama fired three hundred and seventy shots, of 
which only twenty-eight hit the Kearsarge. The Kear- 
sarge fired only one hundred and seventy-three shots, 
nearly all of which struck the Alabama. It was the 
old story over again of good shooting. At noon Semmes 
saw that the Alabama was about to sink and hauled 
down his flag. While the Kearsarge's boats were hur- 
rying to rescue those of the Alabama's crew that were 
alive, the vessel lurched and sank, her bow being lifted 
high out of the water as she went down. The yacht 
Deerhound rescued forty-two men, including Semmes, 
and took them to England. Between thirty and forty 
men of the Alabama were killed or drowned; the 
Kearsarge had three men wounded, one of whom died. 

Thus ended one of the greatest duels on the high 



230 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

seas in history. The people of the North, after that, 
always had a deep affection for the Kearsarge, and it 
is probable that she would always have been preserved 
in the navy. Unfortunately, she w^as wrecked, on 
February 2, 1894, on Roncador Reef, off the coast of 
^Nicaragua, while on a trip to Central America. The 
vessel could not be saved, and little by little went to 
pieces. It was always the custom on board the Kear- 
sarge to celebrate June 19th as a special holiday. On 
these occasions the crew always met in a body and sang 
a song known as the Kearsarge Song. That song was 
sung for the last time on the ship's holiday, June 19, 
1893. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

DEWEy's victory at MANILA. 



When the civil war ended the United States had 

so many war ships that, as one looked at the list, it 

seemed as if this country was one of the great naval 

powers in the world; but when the Government had 

sold the boats that were no longer useful, the navy 

was found to be small. For more than fifteen years 

no new boats were built, and by 1880 the navy came 

to be known as something of a laughingstock. There 

were splendid men in it, but the vessels were almost 

useless. In 1883, however, the United States made a 

new start in naval affairs, and four modern war ships 

were launched. Year by year new ships were added, 

although it was hard work to get the money for them 

from Congress. After a time the country began to 

build battle ships. By the year 1894 the United States 

was the fifth or sixth naval power in the world, and it 

began to be known that our ships, even if they were 

few in number, were the best of the kind in the world. 

The other nations began to respect the United States 

navy once more. 

231 



232 



OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 



It was not until 1898, when the war with Spain 
came, that the navy was called upon once more to 
show its valor in fighting. In 1873 the United States 
came very near having a war with Spain. In 1888 
there was danger of trouble with Germany over the 
Samoan Islands, and Commander Richard P. Leary, 




The old and the new, showing the type of war-ship employed 
during the first part of the Civil War with that now in use. 
The modern vessel, the cruiser Maine ; the old type, the 
Constitution. 



of the United States navy, did what few commanders 
of the navy have done or have ever had a chance to do. 
He cleared his ship, the Adams, for action, and ran 
in between the German war ship Adler and the shore, 
just as the Adler was about to fire on some natives who 
were on the property of a United States citizen. Had 
the German ship fired a single gun that day Leary 



DEWEY'S VICTORY AT MANILA. 233 

would have fired into her, and war with Germany 
might have followed. Learj could not cable home, 
and he stood up bravely and alone for his coun- 
try's interests. He was thanked in person by the 
President, the Secretary of State, and the Secretary 
of the Navy when he returned from Samoa, but no 
official notice was ever taken of his bold stand for his 
country. Not even a scrap of paper was given to 
Leary to show that his acts were approved. His native 
State, Maryland, however, presented him with a gold 
watch, and the citizens of the United States, through 
the newspapers, declared Leary to be one of the 
heroes of the navy, and his reward will be their ap- 
proval in history. 

In 1894 there was a revolution in Brazil. The 
men of the Brazilian navy were the rebels. They re- 
fused to allow American vessels to enter the harbor of 
Rio de Janeiro. The United States sent a squadron 
of war ships down there, and on January 30, 1894, 
these ships cleared for action to fight the Brazilian 
rebels. The Brazilians yielded, however, and allowed 
the United States war ships to take American vessels 
up the harbor. Three years before this there was 
danger of war between the United States and Chili, 
because some of the crew of the cruiser Baltimore 
were assaulted in the streets of Valparaiso, but that 
cloud soon passed away, and it was not until the 
Cuban revolution came that there was prospect that 



234 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

the United States navy would be used in war once 
more. 

Spain found tliat she could not conquer the Cubans 
by war, and the cruel Captain-General Weyler began 
to try to starve all those who were not fighting in the 
field. He made the old and young, the sick and in- 
firm, the women and children, go into the cities, where 
little by little they were starved. The people of the 
United States were enraged. Citizens of the United 
States in Havana and other Cuban cities were afraid 
for their lives and property. Spain recalled Weyler, 
but kept up the starvation, and finally the United 
States sent the battle ship Maine to Havana to protect 
its own citizens in case of trouble. The Maine was 
anchored over a secret mine or torpedo of some 
kind, and on the night of February 15, 1898, some 
one in control of the wires leading to the mine turned 
on the electricity and blew up the splendid battle ship. 
More than two hundred and sixty lives were lost on 
board. A great wave of anger passed over the United 
States, and while it could not be proved at that time 
that the Spaniards blew up the ship. Congress decided 
that Spain must quit Cuba forever, and this brought 
on war between that country and the United States. 

The war began on April 21st. Before that time 
the United States had been gathering its fleet in the 
Atlantic at Key West, and its fleet in the Pacific at 
Hong Kong, the English possession in China. The 



DEWEY'S VICTORY AT MANILA. 235 

'NaYj Department made swift and sure preparation 
for war. AVlien it came the ships were ready to tight. 
A blockade was put in force at once oft" Havana, and 
the United States vessels began to capture prizes. 



w 



r 



The wreck of the Maine. 

The Pacific squadron was in command of Com- 
modore George Dewey. lie liad made every prepara- 
tion for war, £rnd soon orders came for him to go to 
Manila, in the Philip])ines, Spain's great island pos- 
sessions in the Pacific, to fight a Spanish fleet. Eng- 
land notified him that he must leave Hong Kong, and 
he set out with his fleet for Mirs Bay, about twenty 
miles away. His orders were " to capture or destroy 
the Spanish fleet in the Philippines." He had seven 
war ships with him and two supply boats. The largest 
of the war ships was the Olympia, the flagship, a fine, 
new armored cruiser. The other vessels of his fleet 

were the Baltimore, Boston, Paleigh, Concord, Petrel, 
17 



236 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

and McCulloch. The McCulloch was really a revenue 
cutter. The sailors on English war ships cheered 
the fleet as it left Hong Kong, and shouted that 
the United States vessels would surely win. Op- 
posed to Dewey was the Spanish fleet of eleven cruisers 
and gunboats under the command of Admiral Monto- 
jo. Most of these vessels were old and of wood. 
Dewey's fleet was stronger, but the Spaniards had the 
help of splendidly armed forts in Manila Bay, where 
the fight took place, and really were more than a 
match in guns for the Americans. 

Dewey had much at stake. He was nearly eight 
thousand miles away from his nearest home port. If 
he was beaten, or only partly beaten, there was no 
place for him to go after the fight. He could not get 
coal to start away, and of course could not obtain food. 
He simply had to win, or die in the attempt. No such 
work was ever put upon a naval officer in command 
of a fleet. He knew what failure meant, and started 
out from Mirs Bay on April 27, bound to win a vic- 
tory. On April 30th he approached the Philippine 
Islands. Not far from Manila Bay is Subig Bay. 
Dewey sent the Concord and Boston ahead to see if 
the Spanish fleet was there. He hurried the Balti- 
more after the Boston and Concord, and found that 
the enemy was not in the bay. He then called all his 
captains on the flagship and gave orders for the work 
the next day. That night his fleet arrived just before 



238 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

midnight at the entrance to Manila Bay. It is one of 
the finest harbors in the world. It is one hundred and 
twenty miles in circumference, and one of the en- 
trances to the bay is &ve miles wide. All lights on the 
United States ships were put out, except one at the 
stern of each vessel, which showed a vessel follow- 
ing how to steer. Dewey led the way, and the ships 
crept in past the forts on Corregidor Island. The 
little McCulloch was last in the line. The coal she 
was burning made a blaze, and three shots were fired 
from a battery on the island at the ships. The Boston 
and Concord fired back, but Dewey gave orders at 
once to cease firing. 'No damage was done on either 
side. 

The American sailors slept on the decks beside 
their guns while the ships continued up the bay toward 
Manila. When daylight began to appear the men 
were aroused and a light breakfast was given to them. 
Dewey expected to find the Spanish fleet drawn up 
in front of the city of Manila, but it was not there. 
He turned and went back toward the entrance to the 
harbor along the east side of the bay to Cavite, where 
there was a naval arsenal, several forts on the main 
bay and also on a small bay called Baker Bay, which 
was formed by a point of land jutting out toward the 
city of Manila. Dewey had left the McCulloch and 
his two supply boats out in the middle of Manila Bay 
while he went hunting for the Spanish fleet. It was 



240 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

5.15 A. M., on Sunday, May 1, just as lie was lea\^ng 
the water front of Manila, that a shot was fired from 
that city at the American fleet. Dewey by this time 
had discovered the Spanish vessels drawn up under 
the forts at Cavite. The Spaniards had no doubt that 
they would win. So careless were they that, instead 
of preparing their ships for fighting, most of the 
officers the night before had attended a ball in Manila. 
Dewey's vessels were expected, and the next morning 
all the Spanish officers were on hand to fight. They 
saw Dewey's vessels bearing down on them, and, with 
the Cavite forts to help them, all the ships began 
to shoot long before Dewey was in range. The Span- 
ish ships were in a half circle at the entrance to Baker 
Bay. The American ships were in a line with the 
Olympia leading; then came the Baltimore, Raleigh, 
Concord, Petrel, and Boston. 

It was exactly at 5.35 o'clock in the morning when 
Dewey, who was standing on the bridge of the Olym- 
pia, turned to Captain Gridley, of the flagship, and 
said quietly: 

" You may begin, Gridley, whenever you wish." 
At once the eight-inch guns of the Olympia 
roared, and that was a signal for the other vessels of 
the American fleet to begin firing. Every vessel of 
the Spanish fleet was already in action, and the great 
guns of the forts at Cavite added to the noise. It 
was a beautiful morning, but very hot. The Ameri- 



DEWEY'S VICTORY AT MANILA. 241 

cans expected that they would be damaged severely 
and many men would be killed, and they went at their 
work furiously. Two mines were exploded in front of 
the Olympia as that vessel led the way past the Span- 
ish fleet and forts, but Dewey, who had been on Far- 
ragut's flagship in the great fight in Mobile Bay when 
Farragut paid no attention to torpedoes and went 
ahead, followed the great admiral's example and con- 
tinued to lead the way. 

The first shot from the Spaniards showed that they 
were poor marksmen. The men on the American fleet 
could see that their own guns were doing great damage 
to the Spaniards. I^o attention was paid to the forts 
at Cavite. The American ships fought the Spanish 
ships alone. After the American vessels had passed 
the Spanish fleet, they swung about and went back. 
The form of their path was like a figure eight. The 
fighting was just as furious on the return trip, and 
when Dewey turned to begin another eight it was seen 
that the Spaniards were about to try something new. 
The Spanish flagship, Reina Cristina, left the rest of 
the fleet, and boldly steamed out to meet the Olympia. 
Every gun on the Olympia was trained against her; 
men were shot down in droves on her decks, and she 
turned about to flee. As she turned, an eight-inch 
shell from the Olympia struck the stern of the ship 
and passed clear through to the bow. That shot ex- 
ploded the boilers and killed more than sixt^ men. 



DEWEY'S VICTORY AT MANILA. 243 

one of whom was the captain. The Reina Cristina at 
once was set on fire by tlie shot, and Admiral Montojo 
had to leave the ship and go to another, the Isla de 
Cuba. \ 

Dewey was now on the return part of his second 
eight. He met a new difficulty. Two torpedo boats 
were seen to start from under the forts at Cavite and 
dart toward the Olympia. When they were three 
miles away, Dewey's men began to shoot at them with 
the big guns, but could not hit them because they were 
so small. On they came with great speed. This was 
the most trying pa:^t of the day. The American gun- 
ners watched them eagerly. When they were within 
eight hundred yards of the Olympia Dewey gave the 
word for the small guns on his ship to be turned against 
them. A terrible rain of steel was poured on them. 
The torpedo boat in the lead stopped suddenly, then 
went on a few yards, and finally a black puff of smoke 
burst from her decks. The American gunners had 
shot into her boilers and she blew up and sank at 
once. The other torpedo boat turned and ran to shore. 
She reached the beach in a sinking condition. 

For the fifth time Dewey was soon passing the 
enemy. 'No one had been killed on his own ship, but 
he did not know how the other vessels had fared. His 
own supply of ammunition was getting low, and he 
signaled to the vessels to go out in the middle of the 
bay after they had passed the Spanish fleet and fort. 




Admiral. 



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Rear-Admiral. 




Captain. 







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Commander. 



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Lieutenant-Commander. 



Lieutenant. 




Lieutenant — Junior Grade. 




Ensign. 



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Surgeon. Paymaster, 

ShouIjPEr straps of the United States Navy. 



DEWEY'S VICTORY AT MANILA. 245 

lEe saw that several of the Spaiiisli vessels were on 
fire, and he decided to give his men a rest and time 
to have breakfast before beginning again. It was 
then 7.45 a. m. The Spaniards thought the Ameri- 
cans were beaten and had retired. Dewey was not that 
kind of a man. He called at once for reports as to the 
loss of life. Every captain reported that no men had 
been killed; the Baltimore reported that six men had 
been wounded slightly. Cheer upon cheer rang from 
the American ships when they heard this news, and 
then the men ate a cold breakfast. Most of them then 
stretched themselves out to rest before more w^ork 
began. 

Dewey called his captains on his flagship .to con- 
sult as to the rest of the battle. Like the great fight 
in Mobile Bay, this fight was to have two parts. It 
was decided to take the American ships close to the 
enemy, and to remain there while the finishing work 
was done. At 10.45 o'clock Dewey ordered the Balti- 
more to go at full s]ieed toward the f<^rts and ships, and 
to fire as fast as possible at them. She went close to 
the enemy and stopped soon after she began to shoot. 
Twenty minutes later the Olympia came up and took 
the Baltimore's place, the Baltimore moving down the 
line quite a distance. Then the Ealeigh and the Bos- 
ton took the places of the Olympia and the Baltimore, 
and continued the firing. The little Petrel and the 
Concord ran around to the entrance of Baker Bay and 



246 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

kept up a sharp fight. The Petrel is one of the small- 
est vessels m the United States navy, but her work at 
this time was so bold and brilliant that the sailors of 
the American fleet called her at once " the baby battle 
ship." One after another the Spanish vessels began 
to burn or sink, and little by little the guns on the 
forts, which were attacked in this second fight, ceased 
to fire. At 12.45 o'clock the Petrel and Boston and 
Ealeigh were the only American ships firing at the 
enemy, and exactly at 1.05 p. m. the Spanish flag was 
lowered at Cavite, and the fight was over. 

'No such naval fight was ever known before. 
Three of the Spanish vessels were sunk and eight were 
burned. ISTot one escaped. The wreckage was awful. 
It is not known how many men on the Spanish fleet 
and in the foTts were killed, but it is probable that 
more than five hundred were killed on the ships and 
three hundred on the land. Nearly fifteen hundred 
of the Spaniards were also wounded, many of whom 
died. The only ship of the American fleet to receive 
any damage worthy of note was the Baltimore, which 
was hit by a 4.7-inch shell, that entered her side and 
injured six of the crew. Several of the American 
officers had narrow escapes. Among these was Com- 
modore Dewey. He stood on the bridge of the Olym- 
pia during the entire flght, and a shot passed a few 
feet over his head and the heads of those with him, 
and cut off the signal halyards. The Boston's 




Lieut. Hobson. Admiral Dewey. captain sigsbee. 

Rear-Admiral Sampson. Rear-Admiral Schley. 

Naval heroes of the war with Spain. 



248 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

boats, with the exception of one, were destroyed from 
the blast of her own guns. A ten-inch shell from the 
Spanish forts struck the water close to the bow of 
the Olympia and bounded clear over the vessel. In 
all the Olympia was hit thirteen times: three times 
in the hull, and the rest in the rigging. Most 
of the other American vessels had some scars in the 
rigging, but the damage done to them amounted to 
almost nothing. 

When the men on the American fleet saw that the 
fight was over for good, they danced and sang and 
wept. Many of them got down on their knees on 
deck and thanked God for bringing every man in the 
fleet through the battle safely. Dewey turned to his 
staff and said : 

" I have the finest lot of men that ever stepped on 
shipboard, and their hearts are as stout as their ships.'' 

It was not until a week later that the details of the 
wonderful victory reached the United States. Dewey's 
name was upon millions of lips. All over the country 
there was great rejoicing. The President made Dewey 
rear admiral, and Congress sent him and his men a 
vote of thanks. Not only was his victory unlike any- 
thing in history, but it was said that such a triumph 
would never be repeated. 'No one could foresee that 
two months later the United States navy would win 
a victory off the coast of Cuba almost exactly like 
the one Dewey had won in Manila Bay. 



CHAPTER XIY. 

THE NAVAL BATTLE OF JULY 3, NEAR SANTIAGO. 

Soon after the war with Spain began, it was 
thought probable that there would be a great naval 
fight somewhere near Cuba's coast. Spain's navy 
seemed almost as strong as that of the United States. 
It had several very fast torpedo boat destroyers, a class 
of vessels which the United States did not own, and 
four armored cruisers ready for fighting, which were 
probably the best of the kind in the world. They were 
really fast battle ships. The United States had on the 
Atlantic coast five battle ships, after the Oregon had 
been sent around South America from San Francisco 
on a wonderful trip, several monitors, two armored 
cruisers and a dozen or more unarmored cruisers, be- 
sides fully fifty yachts and merchant vessels which 
had been uiade into war ships, to meet the Spanish 
fleet. Spain sent her armored cruisers and several fast 
torpedo boats to the Cape Yerde Islands, and they 
were there for some time after war had been declared. 
Portugal finally told Spain that her vessels must leave 

there, and on April 29th they started. No one in the 

249 





1 










■ 










i 




- 


! 


: 







The Cuban navy; the only vessel owned by the Cubans. 



NAVAL BATTLE OF JULY 3, NEAR SANTIAGO. 251 

United States knew exactly where they were going. 
Some said they would return to Spain, and others said 
that they were bound for Havana. Still others feared 
that they were about to attack the New England coast. 
The last that was seen of them, after they left the Cape 
Yerde Islands, showed that they were headed in a 
westerly direction, as if to cross the Atlantic. 

The United States had the larger part of its navy 
on the Atlantic at Key West and on the blockade off 
Havana under the command of Acting-Admiral 
Sampson. What was known as a " flying squadron " 
was held in Hampton Koads under command of Com- 
modore Schley. It was to dash out and attack the 
Spanish fleet in case it should appear off the north 
Atlantic coast. A patrol of war ships was kept up 
from Maine to Chesapeake Bay, and all the chief har- 
bors of the coast were protected by mines. All the 
forts along the Atlantic were also strengthened. 

The first engagement in which the ships of the 
United States took part in the war was on April 27, 
1898, when Admiral Sampson, on the New York, 
with two smaller vessels bombarded the forts at Matan- 
zas on the north side of Cuba. The forts were dam- 
aged slightly, but the ships were not damaged at all. 
On May 11th the torpedo boat Winslow and the 
revenue cutter Hudson ran into the harbor at Car- 
denas and enaged the forts there. Two Spanish gun- 
boats were hidden in the bay and began to fire on the 
18 



252 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

Winslow, whose exact range they had. The Winsiow 
was disabled quickly, and Ensign Worth Bagley and 
several of the crew were killed. Bagley was the first 
and only naval officer to be killed in battle in this 
war. The revenue cutter Hudson went to the assist- 
ance of the Winsiow, and under a furious fire, during 
which the United States sailors showed great bravery, 
towed the Winsiow out of the harbor. 

The Cape Verde fleet from Spain had not been 
sighted, and a few days before Bagley was killed Ad- 
miral Sampson ran along the coast of Cuba eastward 
to Porto Eico, to see if the Spanish ships had arrived 
there. For several hours on the morning of May 12th 
he bombarded San Juan, the chief port of the island, 
and then, finding no Spanish war ships, turned about 
and started for Key West again. On the very day 
that Sampson bombarded San Juan the Spanish ships, 
under command of Admiral Cervera, reached the 
island of Martinique, in the West Indies. At last 
the United States had learned where the Spanish ships 
were. The next day, May 13th, Commodore Schley 
with his flying squadron started south from Hampton 
Eoads to try to find Cervera. He was ordered to stop 
at Key West and get the latest news. On May 15th 
it was learned that Cervera and his fleet were at Cura- 
cao, in the Caribbean Sea. The Spanish vessels only 
stayed two days and disappeared again. Meantime 
Sampson and Schley had met at Key West, and Samp- 



lVAVAL battle of JULY 3, NEAR SANTIAGO. 253 

oon started out along the north coast of Cuba, and 
Schley went along the south coast in the hope of 
catching Cervera. On May 20th word reached the 
United States that Cervera had slipped into the har- 
bor at Santiago, It was a harbor guarded by moun- 
tains and great forts, and had a very narrow entrance, 
so that it would be almost impossible for an enemy's 
fleet to enter. 

Schley went slowly along the south coast and 
stopped several days off Cienfuegos, where he thought 
the Spanish vessels might be in hiding, and finding out 
that they were not there, started for Santiago. He 
moved very carefully, and it was not until May 29th 
that he arrived off Santiago, and in a day or two made 
sure that the Spanish fleet was there. Just before he 
reached Santiago he turned back for Key West, so as 
to coal his ships. He was much blamed for this after- 
ward. The sea became smooth soon after he turned 
about, and his ships were coaled from a supply vessel. 
He then went at once to Santiago. He blockaded the 
harbor, and on June 3d bombarded the forts to learn 
how strong they were and where their guns were 
placed. 

Sampson soon joined Schley, and in a few days 
about seventy-five vessels of various kinds of the 
United States were stationed off Santiago. The fight- 
ing vessels were in a semicircle, from three to five 
miles away from the entrance to the harbor. Samp- 



L...___ 




NAVAL BATTLE OF TULY 3, NEAR SANTIAGO. 255 

sun S!,()ii seized the harbor ui' Guaiitauanio, as a port of 
refuge where he might coal iiis ships and send some of 
them in ease tornadoes should sweep the coast. An 
effort had also been made to cut the cables leading 
from Cuba, so that no messages could be received from 
or sent to Spain, and in this work several men on some 
ot' the smaller ships had been killed. All who had 
been engaged in the work had shown great brav- 
ery. Sampson bombarded the forts at Santiago and 
at other places near by on the coast from time to 
time, and kept a constant watch upon the narrow 
entrance to the harbor, day and night, lest the Span- 
ish ships should come out and fight him or try to 
run away. An army corps under General Shafter 
had been sent down, and Sampson had assisted in land- 
ing the troops about twenty miles east of Santiago; 
then he retiu'ned to the watch with most of his ships 
off the port again. It was hard, hot, and nervous work. 
It was feared that during a fog or a storm Cervera 
might come out and sail through the fleet with his 
fast ships and escape to Havana, where he really 
wanted to go. It was also feared that the Spanish tor- 
pedo boats might steal out in the darkness and do great 
damage to the fleet. 

Finally a plan was adopted which Lieutenant Kich- 
mond Pearson Ilobson had formed, to sink a vessel 
in the narrow entrance to Santiago harbor, and thus 
make sure that Cervera could not get out. It was a 



266 OtJR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

daring plan, and it made Ilobson, who witli seven others 
carried it out, a national hero, such as Gushing became 
through his exploits in the civil war. Hobson took the 
steamship Merrimac, which had been loaded with 
coal for the United States fleet, and stripped her of 
movable things and most of the cargo. He had tor- 
pedoes attached to the vessel, and early on the morn- 
ing of June 3d started on his work. Daylight was ap- 
proaching, and Admiral Sampson recalled him. He 
started the next morning about three o'clock. Two 
men were in the engine room to run the engine, and 
the others Avere detailed to assist Hobson on deck, in 
steering, in exploding the torpedoes placed along the 
vessel's side, and in dropping the anchors fore and aft. 
In the darkness they stole awa^'' from the American 
fleet, and they were almost inside the harbor before 
they were seen. All of Hobson's men on deck, except 
the steersman, were lying flat, and had orders not to 
move in case they were wounded. Almost every man 
on the American fleet had volunteered to go with Hob- 
son on this trip, which seemed almost certain death. 

There were no lights, of course, on the Merrirnac. 
Soon a rocket shot up from Morro Castle, the chief 
fort at the entrance of the bay, and almost at once the 
roar of big and little guns was heard by those on the 
American fleet. It was a furious storm of flashes from 
Spanish guns, and roars like thunder peals. It lasted 
for nearly an hour and then ceased. Daylight had 



NAVAL BATTLE OF JULY 3, NEAR SANTIAGO. 257 

(oine, and a small launch from the New York, under 
Ensign Powell's command, hovered about the en- 
trance to the harbor under fire, in the hope that Hob- 
son and his companions had escaped in a small boat, 
and that the launch could rescue them. Powell came 
back finally, and said that he could see nothing of 
Hobson and his men. llirough their glasses the 
officers of the American fleet could see that the Merri- 
mac had been sunk in the channel, and all thought 
that Hobson and his crew must have been killed. 
Late that afternoon, however, a small boat was seen 
coming out of Santiago harbor under a flag of truce. 
A Spanish naval officer was on board and he was 
taken to Admiral Sampson's flagship, where he said 
he was sent by Admiral Cervera to bring the good 
news that Hobson and all his men were safe. Ad- 
miral Cervera said that Hobson's deed was so brave 
that he felt it to be his duty as a man who loved cour- 
age and rejoiced to see heroism, even though shown 
bv an enemy, to send word to the American fleet that 
Hobson and his men were safe and were held as pris- 
oners. The Spanish officer offered to take clothing 
and other things back for Hobson and his men. It 
was a graceful act on the part of the Spanish admiral, 
and the American people showed at once by their 
many kind words that although Cervera was an enemy 
for the time being, he had the respect and admiration 
of till true citizens of the United States, 



258 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

It was learned afterward that the fire from the 
forts on the Merrimac was terrific. The Merrhnac was 
shot through and through, her decks were torn, and 
her rudder was disabled. Two of the large Spanish 
cruisers in the port also fired on her, and a tor- 
pedo boat hurled torpedoes at her. Xot a man in Hob- 
son's crew stirred until the orders were given to let 
go the anchors, and for all hands to meet on the quar- 
ter-deck, where Hobson had the wires leading to the 
torpedoes on his own ship. Amid the crash and thun- 
der of many cannon and the screech of hundreds of 
shells, Hobson exploded some of his torpedoes, the 
wires to most of them having been destroyed, and the 
Merrimac, which had also been damaged by a Spanish 
torpedo, began to sink almost as soon as she was 
checked by her anchors. 

Hobson and his men clung to a raft during the rest 
of the darkness. They barely kept their heads above 
water, because Spanish picket boats were passing about 
the wreck constantly, ready to shoot any one who 
might have survived. Soon after daylight a launch 
was seen coming near the sunken Merrimac. Hobson 
called out, asking if there was a Spanish officer on 
board to whom lie might surrender. Up to that time 
the Spaniards thought they had sunk a battle ship and 
that all on board had been lost. The chief officer in 
the launch was Admiral Cervera himself, and although 
the guards in tlie boat pointed thejr guns at the raft to 



NAVAL BATTLE OF JULY 3, NEAR SANTIAGO. 259 

which Hobson and his men were clinging they did not 
shoot, and Cervera helped Hobson into the launch. 
When he learned the story of the Merrimac from Hob- 
son's lips he praised Hobson and his men, and said he 
would send word of their safety to Admiral Sampson. 
Hobson and his companions were kept prisoners for 
about a month, and then were exchanged. Hobson 
was soon afterward sent to the United States on naval 
business, and wherever he went he was greeted by 
throngs and cheers. 

It was soon learned that the Merrimac did not 
block entirely the channel at Santiago. When the 
rudder was shot away, Hobson could not swing the 
boat around, as he had planned. Sampson and Schley 
kept up their watch closely, but it was thought that the 
Spanish ships would stay in the harbor to help the 
Spanish army fight the American army under General 
Shafter. Cervera, however, got orders to leave the 
harbor at once and try to dash past the American ships 
and fight his way through the blockade off Havana, so 
as to reach that port. It was Sunday morning, July 3d, 
when the men on the American ships were at quar- 
ters and would least expect it, that Cervera left San- 
tiago. He had made his plans the night before, and 
soon after eight o'clock on that morning received a 
signal that Admiral Sampson had left the blockade to 
go east. Sampson intended to land to h^ve a talk with 
General Bhafter, 



W^' 





NAVAL BATTLE OF JULY 3, NEAR SANTIAGO. 261 

Sampson, with his fast flagship, the New York, 
had been stationed at the eastern end of the semi- 
circle of blockading ships, and Schley, on his even 
faster flagship, the Brooklyn, had been stationed on 
the western end. Between the I^ew York and 
Brooklyn were the stations of the Oregon, Iowa, 
Massachusetts, Indiana, and Texas. There was a gen- 
eral understanding in the American fleet that if the 
Spanish ships should come out, the American ships 
should close up to the mouth of the harbor and try 
to destroy them. The Spanish ships had full steam 
up on the morning of July 3d, while the Americans 
had many boilers on their ships not in use. Cervera 
decided to run out of port at full speed, and make at 
once for the Brooklyn. It was thought that if the 
Brooklyn could be disabled or destroyed, some of the 
Spanish ships could outrun the rest of the American 
vessels, and perhaps that all might escape. 

It was exactly 9.35 a. m. when the first of the 
Spanish ships was seen coming out of the harbor. 
Signals were hoisted almost at once saying, " Enemy's 
ships escaping," on almost all of the American ships. 
The battle ship Iowa fired a gun to call attention to 
the signals. The Spanish ships came out in single 
file. In the lead was the Infanta Maria Teresa, and 
she was followed at intervals of about four hundred 
yards by the Vizcaya, Cristobal Colon, and Almirante 
Oquendo. Following the Oquendo were two torpedo 




1 -^s 



NAVAL BATTLE OF JULY 3, NEAR SANTIAGO. 263 

boat destroyers, the Pluton and Furor. They were 
nearly half a mile behind the Oquendo. Admiral 
Sampson being about twelve miles away, Commodore 
Schley was in command of the American vessels. 
The battle ship Massachusetts had gone to Guan- 
tanamo for coal, and took no part in the fight. The 
American vessels that did the fighting were the 
Brooklyn, the Texas, the Oregon, the Iowa, the In- 
diana, and two small vessels which had formerly been 
private yachts, and which were called the Gloucester 
and the Vixen. The Iowa and Texas were almost 
directly opposite the harbor entrance. The Oregon 
and Indiana were some distance to the eastward, and 
the Brooklyn was to the westward. The Gloucester 
lay near the Oregon, and the Vixen was close to the 
shore and nearest to the Brooklyn on the west. 

Cervera's flagship was the Teresa, which came out 
first. As soon as the American ships were within 
sight he began to fire. By this time the American 
ships were in fighting trim, and every man was at 
his post. Smoke was pouring from the funnels, and 
powder and shot were being passed to guns. All the 
American ships were also in motion toward the harbor 
entrance. Cervera saw at once that to escape he must 
turn toward the west. He saw that it was useless to 
fight with his ships coming out one by one, as they 
were, and one by one receiving the awful fire of the 
American ships. He turned sharply toward the west. 




X I 



NAVAL BATTLE OF JULY 3, NEAR SANTIAGO. 265 

Before he had made the turn, however, it seemed as if 
every gun on the American ships had sent some kind 
of a missile into his flagship. A large shell had en- 
tered the boat and cut the water pipe, which was used 
to put out fires. 

Cervera had not gone a mile before his ship was 
useless. Scores of men were killed on board, and 
fires were burning in many places. Commodore 
Schley on the Brooklyn made a turn with his ship and 
started toward the west after the fleeing Spaniard. 
When the Vizcaya appeared around the entrance to 
the port she, too, was met by a terrible fire. One 
thirteen-inch shell alone killed more than sixty of her 
crew. She was not so badly damaged as the Teresa, 
and she managed to pass ahead of the flagship. The 
Cristobal Colon, the fastest of the Spanish ships, 
escaped without much damage as she came out of the 
harbor, and running inside of the Teresa, which was 
now lagging behind, and the Vizcaya, which was 
making a hard race for life, soon passed to the front 
out of the range of the American ships, and seemed 
safe from capture. When the Oquendo came out, she 
received the fire of most of the American ships, and suf- 
fered almost as much damage as the Teresa. 

Then came the two torpedo boats. The American 
fleet had been moving somewhat slowly toward the 
west. Two of the Spanish vessels, the Colon and Viz- 
caya, were far ahead of them, and looked to be safe. 



266 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

The Teresa and Oquendo were hopelessly crippled, and 
Avhile the American ships were firing their big guns 
at them the same shijDS turned their smaller guns on 
the torpedo boats Furor and Pluton. The Glou- 
cester ran up to meet those boats, and began to shoot 
at them with great vigor. A shell from the Iowa 
pierced the boiler of the Pluton, and a black column 
of smoke leaped from her deck and she began to sink. 
The Gloucester dashed in under the forts and drove 
the Furor on the beach, where she sank in the surf. 
Of the one hundred and forty men on these two 
torpedo boats, only eighteen were saved. 'No more 
gallant work was ever done in battle than was done 
by Commander Wainwright on the Gloucester. The 
Pluton and the Furor were destroyed within twenty 
minutes after they appeared. They had not gone 
more than three miles from the harbor. 

It was exactly at 10.15 a. m., or forty minutes 
from the time she came out of the harbor, that the 
Teresa was seen to turn toward the shore at a place 
called Mmawima, six miles and a half from Santiago 
harbor. She soon struck the beach, and those of her 
crew who were not dead or wounded leaped over- 
board to escape the fire that was sweeping through the 
ship, and began to swim for safety. Among them was 
Admiral Cervera. Most of the American ships were 
abreast of the Teresa by this time, with the exception 
of the Indiana, and orders were given to cease firing. 




19 



268 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

Ten minutes later the Oquendo, which had come up 
and had gone about six hundred yards past the spot 
where the Teresa was beached, turned her prow toward 
the shore and in flames struck the ground a complete 
wreck. Her men also leaped in the water and began 
to swim for their lives. The Gloucester came up and 
took Admiral Cervera on board, and protected the 
Spanish crews from some Cubans who were shooting at 
them after they had landed helpless on the shore. 

By this time Admiral Sampson had come hurrying 
back in his flagship. The Indiana had been unable 
to take up the chase for the fleeing Colon and Yiz- 
caya, and he ordered the Indiana back to the harbor to 
guard it. Meantime the Brooklyn, Oregon, Texas, and 
Iowa were dashing down the coast after the Vizcaya. 
She soon received the fire from all, and was damaged 
most severely by the Oregon, which, with a mighty 
rush of speed, had passed all the other American ships 
except the Brooklyn. The Oregon had shown her 
merit in her fast trip from the Pacific to the Cuban 
waters, and she was now to prove her worth and the 
wisdom of bringing her on so long a journey by great 
services in battle. At 11.15 the Vizcaya could no 
longer stand the fire she was receiving from all the 
ships, and she, too, ran ashore. At this time the 
Brooklyn was in the lead of the American vessels, the 
Oregon next, the Texas following, and the Iowa last. 
As the Texas ceased to fire on the Vizcaya, and it was 



NAVAL BATTLE OF JULY 3, NEAR SANTIAGO. 269 

seen that she was a wreck, the men on the Texas began 
to cheer. Captain J. W. Philip, of the Texas, at once 
shouted to his men: 

" Don't cheer, men; the poor fellows there are 
dying." 

The Iowa was left to take care of the Vizcaya, and 
then there came a two hours' chase for the Colon. 
The Colon kept near the shore, and Commodore 
Schley, on the Brooklyn, put out to sea a little, steer- 
ing for a cape where he knew that he could head off 
the Colon. The Oregon was still coming up at great 
speed, with smoke and flame pouring out of her 
smokestacks. The Texas was also making fast time, 
and Schley saw that the Oregon would soon catch the 
Colon, and the Texas also might be able to overhaul 
her. At last the Oregon came within four miles of the 
Colon, and began to shoot at her with thirteen-inch 
guns. One shot landed close to the stern, and another 
struck the water near the bow. At the same time 
the Brooklyn, which was abreast of the Colon, and 
about three miles off, began firing at her with eight- 
inch guns. The captain of the Colon saw that his ship 
was doomed, and turned to the shore at 1.15 p. m. 
He fired a gun from the lee side of his ship, which 
meant that he had given up. She was then forty-eight 
miles west of Santiago. The 'New York arrived al- 
most as soon as the Brooklyn closed in, and Admiral 
Sampson took charge of affairs. 



NAVAL BATTLE OF JULY 3, NEAR SANTIAGO. 271 

The dead on the Spanish ships numbered more 
than five hundred, and the wounded numbered more 
than twelve hundred. Nearly two thousand men were 
taken prisoners. Only one man was killed on the 
United States fleet. He was a chief yeoman, named 
Ellis, on the Brooklyn. One man w^as also wounded on 
the Brooklyn. Nearly all of the American ships were 
hit during the fight, the Brooklyn being struck about 
twenty-five times, but the damage was not serious on 
any of them, and all were in as good fighting condition 
at the close as at the beginning of the fight. It w^as 
practically as great a victor}^ as that won by Dewey at 
Manila. In the Santiago fight the American ships had 
to meet the very best kind of modern war ships. 
Spain's vessels were imable to go as fast as w^as ex- 
pected, because of poor coal and because the bottoms of 
the vessels were very foul with barnacles and weeds. 
The Vizcaya and Oquendo were so riddled and burned 
til at they w^ere ruined. The United States naval offi- 
cers, how^ever, thought they could save the Teresa 
and Colon and add them to the American navy. The 
Teresa was raised, but was lost while being brought to 
this country. 

On board the Spanisli ships which went ashore the 
guns were loaded, and the fire set them off and exploded 
the ammunition in the magazines. The American 
sailors showed great bravery in going aboard the 
Spanish ships at this time, and in saving wounded 



272 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

and dying men. The condition of the Yizcaj^a proved 
that Avhen the Maine was blown np in HaA^ana 
harbor it was not an accident. Spain had said that 
one of the magazines of the Maine had exploded, 
but she could not explain why the bottom of the ship 
came to the top of the wreck. One of the magazines 
on the Vizcaya exploded while she was on the beach, 
and the bottom of the ship was blown down and away 
from the wreck, proving that the Maine must have 
been destroyed by a mine which had been set off by 
Spanish agents. 

As soon as the battle was over there was a scene 
on board the Texas which touched the heart of the 
American nation, and showed the kind of stuff of 
which an American crew and their ca]:)tain is 
made. The crew lined up and gave three cheers 
for Captain Philip. The captain then called every 
man that could be spared to the quarter-deck, and 
with his head bared made this remarkable speech to 
his men : 

" I want to make public acknowledgment here that 
I believe in God the Father Almighty. I want all 
you officers and men to lift your hats, and from your 
hearts offer silent thanks to the Almighty for this 
day." 

All hats came off, and after a moment or two of 
silence the crew burst into cheers again for their 
captain. 



1 



Vizcaya at the moment of the explosion of her magazines. 
From an instantaneous photograph. 



274 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

Commodore Sclilej.- who was in charge of the fleet 
during the fighting, gave Admiral Sampson full credit 
for the victory, and said to Sampson in his report that 
he was glad to take part in a " victory that seems big 
enough for all of us." 

Captain Evans, of the Iowa, known in the navy 
as " Fighting Bob," won praise throughout the land 
by this remark about his sailors in his report: 

" So long as the enemy showed his flag they fought 
like American seamen, but when the flag came down 
they were as gentle and tender as American women." 

In this great fight all the crews of the American 
ships showed equal bravery. The men at the guns 
never flinched, although thousands of shots were fly- 
ing near them, and the men who were feeding the 
fires stuck to their work in the awful heat and toiled 
as they had never done before. Some of them fainted 
several times, but they would not leave the fire rooms, 
and as much credit should be given to the stokers who 
kept the fires bright as to the gunners who destroyed 
the enemy's ships. It was the general opinion that if 
any one vessel was to be singled out for special praise 
it was the Oregon, which came to the assistance of 
the Brooklyn in "gallant style, and helped the Brook- 
lyn to finish a glorious contest. The Spaniards fought 
bravely, but, having had no target practice, they could 
not shoot straight. The Americans knew how to 
shoot, and that won the day. Spain had now only 



NAVAL BATTLE OF JULY 3, NEAR SANTIAGO. 275 

two first-class vessels left in her navy — a battle ship 
and an armored cruiser — and she was helpless on the 
ocean. Santiago soon surrendered to General Shaf- 
ter, and in less than one month Spain asked the 
United States for terms of peace. 

Some of the small vessels of the navy entered har- 
bors on the Cuban coast and destroyed several gun- 
boats as Sampson's fleet had destroyed the larger ships. 
Half a dozen small gunboats were captured in various 
Cuban harbors and added to the American navy. The 
part that the navy played in the war was indeed 
glorious. 



CHAPTER XY. 

VERA CRUZ 1914. 

After the Spanish War ended there was no ac- 
tive war service for the navy until April, 11)11:, 
when what was called an ^'Expeditionary Force" was 
sent to Vera Cruz by President Woodrow Wilson to 
force a salute to the American flag, in reparation for 
an insult at Tampico to our flag and government hy 
the Iluerta government, at that time in control of 
Mexico. Although no declaration of war was made 
by either side a state of war existed and the outcome 
was a two-days' fight in the capture of Vera Cruz on 
the morning of April 22, by about 7,000 of our ma- 
rines and sailors. In the fighting 17 of our men were 
killed outright and half a dozen of the 50 wounded, 
died later. The Mexicans lost 126 soldiers and citi- 
zen "snipers" in the fighting and about 300 were 
wounded. 

Later an army force of about 10,000 men was sent 
to Vera Cruz under command of Brig. Gen. Fred- 
erick Funston. It remained there until the following 
!N"ovember. Huerta, whom the United States gov- 
276 



VERA CRUZ— 1914 277 

ernment had refused to recognize as the legal Presi- 
dent of Mexico, because of his alleged participation 
in the murder of Francisco Madero, deposed as Presi- 
dent by General Huerta, meantime had fled from 
Mexico. He left the country in a state of anarchy 
and one provisional President after another followed. 
President Wilson ordered the army and navy home 
in the fall of 1914, and the salute to the American 
flag, which Mr. Wilson demanded and which was the 
occasion of our armed invasion of a foreign country, 
followed by bloodshed, was never given. Mexican 
pride was not humiliated. 

Mexico had been in a state of revolution for more 
than three years. Diaz, who, in spite of the constitu- 
tion of the country, had made himself a sort' of per- 
petual president and who had ruled the country as 
a dictator for a generation, was forced to flee finally 
through the uprising started by Madero and the latter 
was elected President at a legal but farcical election. 
His friends finally turned against him. Huerta, who 
had been one of his mainstays, joined in the move- 
ment to oust him. Huerta was charged openly not 
only with treachery, but with ordering the assassina- 
tion of Madero while the latter was being taken to 
jail from the President's residence. Huerta always 
denied that he had instigated the murder. 

Many foreign governments recognized Huerta as 
de facto President, but President Wilson refused to 



278 OUR Kavy in time of war. 

so recognize him. Meantime a revolution had started 
against Hiierta and later these revolutionists fell out 
against one another. There were many large foreign 
investments in Mexico, chiefly in mining and in oil 
fields. Foreign governments unofficially kept asking 
the United States to restore peace in the stricken 
country and protect their interests. American in- 
vestors in oil fields seemed arrayed for a time against 
English investors. Soon the great oil fields near 
Tampico on the Atlantic coast came to be a centre 
of contention. American interests in that neighbor- 
hood demanded protection and Eear Admiral Henry 
T. Mayo was sent there hastily with a small force, 
among which was the despatch boat Dolphin. 

There was no outbreak until the morning of April 
9, 1914, when the paymaster of the Dolphin and 
seven men were sent ashore to buy some gasoline for 
use on the Dolphin. Their whaleboat flew the Amer- 
ican flag, as was proper. As soon as the boat reached 
shore a military officer of the Huerta government 
arrested the entire force and took them to jail, on 
the pretext that they had invaded Mexican soil flying 
a foreign flag. Eear Admiral Mayo at once de- 
manded the release of the men and furthermore de- 
manded a written apology and a salute to the United 
States' flag within twenty-four hours. Later he ex- 
tended the time for the salute for another twenty- 
four hours. He agreed to salute the Mexican flag 



VERA CRUZ— 1914 279 

after ours had been saluted. This demand was re- 
fused indignantly by the Huerta government. Mayo 
reported what he had done to Washington and 
President Wilson backed up Mayo's demands. 
After three or four days^ negotiations the Huerta 
government agreed to a simultaneous salute of both 
flags, but no further would it go. President Wilson 
finally fixed a definite date for the Mexican salute 
to our flag and threatened force if it were not 
given. 

Huerta scornfully let the hour go by. Eear Ad- 
miral Frank F. Fletcher was ordered to Vera Cruz 
with a division consisting of the Prairie, Chester and 
San Francisco, all cruisers, and the battle ships 
Florida and Utah. He had several smaller vessels 
with him. Orders were also hurried to Pear Ad- 
miral Charles J. Badger, in command of the Atlantic 
Fleet and then in West Indian waters, to hurry to 
Fletcher's assistance. Fletcher and Badger were 
told to take possession of the custom house and the 
port and to hold them until an army force could be 
sent from Galveston to relieve them from shore duty. 
Fletcher, in sole command until Badger should ar- 
rive, tried to find the officials of the port and city 
but they disappeared. He gave notice that he would 
land his men at a certain time. He warned the 
commander of the Fort San Juan d'Ulloa not to fire 
on his ships. A force of several thousand Mexican 



280 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

troops had been held in the city, but they were with- 
drawn gradually to the suburbs. 

Fletcher did not want to bombard the town. He 
sent 1,300 sailors and marines ashore on the after- 
noon of April 21st and street fighting began at once. 
Street after street was cleared. The ships also fired 
at the naval academy and other buildings from which 
shots were being fired at our men. By nightfall the 
sailors and marines had possession of the parks, the 
open spaces of the town and the chief streets. De- 
sultory shooting kept up through the night and soon 
after midnight, on the morning of April 2 2d, Ad- 
miral Badger arrived with his fleet of battle ships, 
several hours before he was expected. In the fleet 
were the battle ships Arkansas, Delaware, Kansas, 
IN'ew Hampshire, South Carolina, Michigan and 
!N'ew Jersey. Other battle ships were hurried from 
naval stations in the United States. 

Fletcher at 2.30 in the morning reported to Bad- 
ger what had been done, and at daylight nearly 
6,000 more men were landed from the ships. Many 
of these units went into action and there were lively 
exchanges of shots in the streets up to eleven o'clock 
in the morning, when the naval force was in undis- 
puted possession of the town, and the Mexican force 
had fled several miles out into the country. 

The dead and wounded were cared for, and later 
the American dead were sent to the United States, 



VERA CRUZ— 1914 281 

where a great public funeral was held in the "New 
York navy yard in Brooklyn on May 12. Presi- 
dent Wilson made the chief address at the funeral, 
and in his speech he said : 

" We have gone down to Mexico to serve man- 
kind if we can find the way." Evidently the United 
States did not find a way^ for at this writing, late in 
August, 1915, Mexico is still in a state of revolu- 
tion and President Wilson has just called a confer- 
ence of l^orth, Central and South American diplo- 
mats to find the way of restoring peace to poor Mex- 
ico. As has been said, the " Expeditionary Force " 
failed completely in its purpose to require a salute 
from anyone in authority in Mexico to our flag for 
the insult in Tampico. The prevailing belief in the 
United States was that the demand for a salute was 
merely a pretext for interference by our country, 
in the hope of driving Huerta out and restoring 
peace. To have required a salute would probably 
have brought on war on an extended scale, and this 
President Wilson was determined not to have if he 
could prevent it. He gave up the idea when the 
entire military and naval force was brought home 
in ^N'ovember and Vera Cruz was given back to the 
Mexicans. The menace of further war on our part 
compelled Huerta to quit Mexico, and in that respect 
President Wilson's " expedition " was a success. 

A notable event in the naval history of the world, 



282 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

althongli in no way connected with war or the im- 
mediate prospect of any war, was the despatch of the 
United States Atlantic Eleet around the world, the 
start heing made on December 16, 1907. The fleet 
returned on Feb. 22, 1909, to Hampton Roads, from 
which it started. The cruise attracted the attention 
of the world. The fleet consisted of sixteen battle 
ships. Fourteen of the ships made the entire cruise. 
Two of the original sixteen were detached at San 
Francisco, after making the journey around South 
America, and two others took their places for the re- 
turn to the Atlantic through the Mediterranean. 

"No nation had ever made such a naval demon- 
stration. President Theodore Roosevelt, who once 
was Assistant Secretary of the E"avy and who was 
always an advocate of a strong navy, ordered the 
cruise. He never made public his reasons for the 
showy display. There were man}^ misgivings over 
leaving the Atlantic coast unprotected, and many 
nations were much concerned over the meaning of 
the trip. 

The cruise was a revelation of latent power to 
the other nations. It displayed the flag with the 
emblems of power in every continent, and on every 
sea. Instead of evoking hostile criticism the 
journey resolved itself into a manifestation of 
friendship by other nations. The ovations to the 
American officers and sailors increased as the fleet 



VERA CRUZ— 1914 283 

made its progress from coiantry to country. Brazil, 
Chile and Peru showed the warmest kind of hos- 
pitality. Then came a visit to New Zealand and 
Australia, where the demonstrations were most ex- 
uberant. Japan gave most cordial greetings, and 
China added its expression of welcome. Various 
countries bordering on the Mediterranean joined in 
the acclaim, and when the Fleet was welcomed home 
by President Koosevelt, he made a speech of five 
words, saying: 

" You have done the trick." 
'No further explanation could be obtained from 
the President as to the motives which inspired this 
stirring procession of warships carrying the Ameri- 
can flag around the entire world. 

The Fleet steamed about 46,000 miles. It was 
reviewed by four presidents : Koosevelt of the United 
States, Penna of Brazil, Montt of Chile and Pardo 
of Peru. The Emperor of Japan entertained the 
leading officers at luncheon. Prince Lang of China 
was also host to part of the Fleet at Amoy. The 
Khedive of Egypt also entertained a group of officers 
at Cairo. The King and Queen of Greece dined on 
one of the battle ships, and the King of Italy received 
Admiral Sperry and staff in Kome. 

Kear Admiral Robley D. Evans was in command 
of the Fleet on the trip from Hampton Roads to San 
Francisco, where, owing to ill health, he was de- 
20 



284 OUR NAVY IN TIME OF WAR. 

tached. Kear Admiral Charles M. Thomas succeeded 
him for five days only, and then Rear Admiral 
Charles S. Sperry took command for the rest of the 
journey. 

The period from 1898, when the Spanish War 
ended, until the present writing, 1915, has been one 
of great development and of preparation for war by 
the American navy. Although the Atlantic Fleet 
destroyed the Spanish ships off Cuba in 1898, that 
short conflict and the battle that Dewey had with the 
Spaniards in Manila Bay, disclosed that not only 
was there great need for a real navy but for better 
marksmanship. At once the naval authorities began 
an agitation for more and larger battle ships, and for 
money to provide target shooting on an extensive 
scale twice a year. The plan was adopted of adding 
at least one battle ship a year, but generally two, until 
by 1910 the United States navy was ranked third 
in the naval strength of the nations, Great Britain 
and Germany alone exceeding it. At times since 
then it has been asserted that the United States has 
passed Germany in naval power, but this has always 
been a question of doubt. The fact is the navies of 
Germany and the United States, both of which have 
grown rapidly in the last fifteen years, have been 
about equal in strength. In skill in shooting, how- 
ever, the United States has surpassed the records 
of all others, according to target practice statistics. 



VERA CRUZ— 1914 285 

There are 5^000 officers and about 55,000 men in 
round numbers on the roster of the United States 
navy. Great Britain has. a naval rule that her pov^er 
on the sea must be equal to that of the two next 
strongest naval powers. According to the latest 
figures the British navy in high-powered ships 
consists of 76 battle ships and 44 armored cruis- 
ers, built or building. Germany has 40 battle 
ships and 17 armored cruisers built or building, 
and the United States has 40 battle ships and 
11 armored cruisers, built or building. Each 
navy has a corresponding list of unarmored cruisers, 
destroyers, torpedo boats and submarines with aux- 
iliaries of various kinds. The life of a battle ship 
is rarely longer than ten years. All of the battle 
ships of Sampson's Fleet at Santiago in 1898 were 
out of date before the great cruise of the Atlantic 
Fleet around the world began in 1907, and the cost 
of a battle ship has risen from about $5,000,000, 
when the Oregon was built, to nearly $15,000,000. 
In the spring of 1915 the United States launched 
the most powerful battle ship afloat in the Arizona of 
30,000 tons, as compared with 10,000 tons of the 
Oregon, or the 16,000 tons of the Connecticut, the 
flagship of the American Fleet on the big cruise. 

In one respect the United States Fleet has 
lagged woefully behind those of Great Britain and 
Germany. That has been, the development of tor- 



286 OUR NAVY IX TIME OF WAR. 

pedo destroyers and submarines. In aviation also 
has our country been far behind those two nations, 
although Congress recently appropriated $1,000,000 
for aviation experiments for the navy. The sub- 
marine, which has focussed the attention of the world 
by its feats of daring and great destruction, espe- 
cially by the Germans, in the Great European War 
now going on, was originally an American invention. 
Bushnell tried successfully such a boat in New York 
harbor just before the Kevolutionary War. After- 
ward Robert Fulton tried to induce England and 
France to take up the invention without success. 
JiTapoleon watched one perform successfully in Paris, 
but he and all the other military authorities of Eu- 
rope frowned on the use of such war implements 
on the ground that they were inhuman and would 
produce, cowardly warfare. What would they say 
if they could read the history of naval warfare of 
to-day ? 

The foregoing pages tell of an attempt to make 
use of the submarine principle in the Civil War. 
It was not a success. In the early eighties a 'New 
Jersey school teacher, named Holland, brought a 
better perfected submarine to the attention of our 
government. Our naval men looked askance at it. 
It was made on the principle that now governs sub- 
marines: fuel combustion while running on the sur- 
face and electrical power for running while sub- 



VERA CRUZ— 1914 287 

merged. iN"© less than three of our naval boards 
reported against accepting it. Finally with great re- 
luctance our navy adopted the boat. 

Other countries, notably England, France and 
Germany, also experimented with the Holland and 
similar designs and made great headway in build- 
ing them. Not until the Great European War did 
they have a fair trial. Japan ordered three or four 
from this country when at war with Russia, but they 
arrived too late to be of service. Germany's raids in 
1915 on English commerce and on English warships 
revealed their great use and tremendous power. The 
sinking of the great English transatlantic liner 
Lusitania, in the spring of 1915, sent a thrill of hor- 
ror around the world. A great American engine of 
war, the submarine, then came into its own as a 
terrible agent of destruction, and, as a result, the 
submarine and the flying machine, also of American 
origin, bid fair to revolutionize the science of war- 
fare. 



